He'd been away so long. Every step had carried him further until he hardly remembered the scent of the island that had sheltered him as a child. Now he found himself promising that it was a visit. That he'd return to the bone-crowned girl in a few days, but he needed to go. This was a visit long overdue, and he couldn't rationalize putting it off any longer.
It had taken several days to cross Beqanna alone. Head down, jaw set, the flame haired young stallion had walked restlessly until he ran out of places to put his hooves. Instead he waited, water lapping at his heels while he built the courage to cross over to the tree studded island waiting for him. Well then. May as well get this over with. Normally cold water was frigid in the early winter, drinking the heat from his core as it rose over his back.
The passage was short, but enough to chill him to the bone by the time he stepped onto the opposite shore. Not much had changed, he noted, looking around cautiously. Not outwardly, anyhow. It was surreal to step back into his childhood home, expecting treachery and danger in every shadowed hollow. His time had changed him more than he'd realized...
Mother should be around here somewhere. Maybe even Tana was back from his own adventures. Uncle Ivar, surely, still roamed the tropical kingdom. Homesick for a familiar face, he called out hesitantly into the humid air. "Hello? Anyone about?" His voice was hoarse and low, and still managed to agitate the nearby parrots. If nothing else, their abrupt eruption from their roosts would alert anyone looking to his presence. Slowly following a familiar path, the buckskin boy looked hopefully for some sign of his family.
@[Ivar]
Ivar stands at the edge of the beach, shaded from the hot sun by the thick canopy of evergreens. Sleeping through the cacophony of parrots has long since become a habit, and it is now the changes in their constant chirruping that is more likely to disturb him.
It does so now, an eruption of calls that suggests someone new on the island. Ivar's eyes blink open immediately but the piebald creature remains quite still. His sapphire blue ears flick from the damp tangle of his dark mane, and pale nostrils flare to catch the warm breeze that blows the smell of the disturbance directly toward him. Some of it is familiar, and once he has moved forward to round a curve in the beach, the kelpie knows why.
Raul, no longer a gawky colt, stands on the white sand beach like someone who needs to be invited. It is an unfamiliar look on him, but given how he has changed, perhaps that is understandable. Ivar wonders if perhaps Castile has told the young stallion that he'd been here, or if the colorful buckskin has come back for a different reason. Whatever the reasoning behind his winter arrival, Ivar is pleased to see the young stallion. Sabra's reappearance had rid him of the weight of responsibility for the boys, but the kelpi's instinct has made both Raul and Santana family-by-proxy, and he is curious what the two of them have been up to, and where they have been.
"Raul!" Calls the tricolored creature, moving forward at a steady trot across the warm sand. There's a smile on his pale face when he draws to a stop, looking over the young stallion for a moment before meeting his gaze directly. "What brings you back to Ischia?"
@[Raul]
The voice that greets him is familiar, and brings a wash of relief when it falls on the young stallion's ears. His hooves spun in the sand before catching sight of the owner, and when he sees the kelpie emerge from the jungle a cheerful nicker of greeting thrums from his chest.
"Uncle! I should have known you'd still be here. How are you? How's Kyp and Kyvi?" He rasped with a grin on his blood stained lips. He had trotted until he was abreast of the older stallion, head dropping respectfully as he came to a halt. The last time he had seen the rugged sea stallion he had only just been hinting at his adult stature. Now the pair stood just about eye level to one another.
He peered at the winter beach and surrounding foliage through the jewel bright sheet of his forelock, remember days spent racing through the surf and games of tag among the palms. For all that they'd had a rough start, the twins had enjoyed a rather carefree youth under the kelpie's watch, a fact for which he'd come to be very grateful. When days got hard, he always had memories of sunshine and safety to fall back on. There were many who couldn't make that claim.
Shrugging lazily, he turned his attention back to Ivar. "There's no place like home, is there?" He commented by way of answer. No matter where he'd traveled, no matter who he was with, the golden son had always remembered the island as home. It was that draw that had pulled him here today, away from Warlight and all she represented.
Maybe that had more to do with his return than he'd wanted to admit. A female in his life, and he had no idea what to do now. Ivar, for all his slipperiness, never seemed to have trouble in that department.
@[Ivar]
The rasp of @[Raul]'s voice is telling, and Ivar's golden gaze flicks to the blood at the young stallion's lips. The Plague has shown no signs of letting up, and while Ivar appears to be immune, the same cannot be said of most of Beqanna. Raul included it seems, and most likely the horses he asks after.
"They've gone with their mother to the other island," He tells the questioning buckskin. He hasn't seen them since the Plague struck, he doesn't add. How long has that been now - a year? longer? Ivar has never been especially good at telling time, and this tropical realm where seasons are nothing but a change in the wind's direction does not help him.
Raul and Santana had left the island at the cusp of adulthood, as colts tend to do. For all that Ivar had kept the sharks from them he could not turn the boys kelpie, though he wonders if they'd have left if he had. Lothbrok and Crashe seem to have no inclination to leave the tropical Ischia, though whether that is Isobell's hold on them or their instinct he can't say. It doesn't matter, in the end, so long as they stay.
There's no place like home, the fire-haired boy says, and Ivar tuns back to him from where his gaze had wandered to the sea. The piebald stallion has lived in a great many places, but this one is by far his favorite. It is the one that belongs to him, and so naturally he belongs here. Sylva and Loess had never had enough water, and Nerine's rocky ocean had never been quite right for the aquatic creature. Too cold, too dark, but at least offset by the fire of their resident women.
"There isn't." He agrees with a nod of his damp head. "What brings you back?"
ooc: this is not as nice as the first one i wrote but at least this one was successfully posted 
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