11-02-2017, 07:29 AM
 i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
There is almost something there, just for an instant, and then it is gone. They return to the familiar light banter that Ivar remembers, and the tension dissipates as she bumps playfully against his shoulder. She teases him, and of course it is about the water – because who was Ivar without the sea? Something different, he has found in this year in Loess, something with more instinct and less emotion. The scaled creature has attributed these changes to maturity, to becoming a stallion and not a colt. Perhaps that is true, too, but that is not the whole of the truth. There is something else to the sea’s call, but he has ignored it for so long. He’s replaced it with fighting and with women, with mares of every shape and color, and with the projected love that he gets from Heda. The bat-winged mare had given him something rather close to it, but the imitation was not a true substitute. Kylin still tastes of the sea, he finds as he runs his muzzle down the length of her spine. She is focused on the kangaroos, he knows, but his question brings her attention back to him, and he meets her gaze with a soft sort of smile. “Sometimes,” he answers truthfully. He doesn’t add the precursor to such thoughts, that they are more frequent when he is near the water, when he is feeling free. For a boy raised in the woods, Ivar has rather strong feelings about the benefits of children and the sea. Ivar knows he has Heda – at least until the truth comes out – but that does not quell his desire for more. Isobell certianly, and if he is honest with himself, Kylin as well. He’d promised her friendship and has no intention of breaking his promise, but the appeal of seeing her round with his child or with a colt at her heels has haunted him since he’d first seen her maternal worry for the little hatchlings on the beach. She’d like it, he is sure, a safe and protected life. Its also something he cannot offer, not while in Loess. There is no sea here, only rolling hills, and he is not the faithful type that Kylin probably wants, like most mares want. “I might have to think more, come spring.” He adds with a wry grin that does’nt quite reach his brown eyes. It’s too early in the season to be sure, but Ivar had not been lax in his attention to his queen this past fall. He’d not been lax in his attention anywhere really. The idea of the Sylvan Wraith’s consort bearing her king a pied foal is pleasant enough to make the crooked smile finally reach his eyes. The kelpie had found Thana fierce and fearless and thrilling; a sharp contrast to sweet Kylin but no less appealing. |