-Oh my love, don't forsake me; Take what the water gave me-
The hard turn of his stare from contemplation to … perhaps bitterness? doesn’t go unnoticed by the smaller mare. “Let him mull over it.” Circinae thinks, unwilling to explain the finer matter of her advice because Amet does not ask it of her. Let fate and time be the ones to explain, then. Trust is withheld, always for her - though it doesn’t mean she keeps others away because of it. Quite the opposite, actually! She alone decides who comes close and who stays away; this is where intuition and self-awareness become the first shields against grave missteps. Trust, the tender blossom, comes after; given and received by mutual parties who choose to allow each other in.
You needn’t trust someone to fuck them, she knows this. It simply becomes a byproduct of choosing to pick the right sort of partner. Alliances, relationships, family units - all are applicable to these guiding laws of life, (for her, at least) and so she holds her tongue and listens while Amet entices her to follow at his heel.
He’ll just have to trust in what she’s told him, she guesses, moving languidly forward until the two are comfortably on their way. “And that isn’t mentioning quiet Ischia, or even Nerine.” She chimes in with a sigh, puzzling over the oddity of Hyaline’s situation. “Gryffen’s coming was due on my part. I never intended for you to get stuck between a rock and a hard place, so for that I’m sorry -” She frowns, peering around them curiously as their path turns shaded with sparse growth. “- but I do believe him to be a flexible sort of individual.”
They walk, the moment stifled into silence by quiet contemplation, and then the shore turns away from them. Amet speaks again. “Let’s just hope Heda can make good decisions too, yea?” She laughs lightly. He shouldn’t worry - that much was true; Circinae’s mind had never been more focused.
That is, until he stops them at the treeline.
Her eyes, so calculating and bright, twist away to rake over the familiarly-colored bark and Circinae gasps just barely. “It’s like the trees of Taiga, yes?” He asks her, the skyward tilt of her chin guiding her up all six feet of its impressive height. Redwood, just as she remembered. Her nose twitches, shifts to a more canine appearance. She presses it flush to the groove of heady wood and inhales, fighting back the surge of tears that threaten to break free once she withdraws again.
Her head pivots, she’s left staring at Amet with incredulous silence.
“I hope to make Hyaline proud.” She manages at last, finding nothing better to repay him the kindness he’s given to her, tenfold.
Circinae
