The moment breaks, and Ramiel is glad. Emotions like the one he’s just experienced are still new and fragile. He tip-toes around them, avoids them as best he can. His approval and understanding of the opposite sex has progressed, but only so far. Noori makes him wish it was further. She makes him want to curve around her, to tell her that she astounds him for all her alien beauty. She’s a stranger, his mind tells him, but his body refutes the fact. He’s a gentleman, though – or at least he was raised to be one – and when she doesn’t invite him further, the stallion immediately halts his study of her. That same, soft smile lights up her face, though. She leaves the door cracked for future invitation. What a dangerous game this could be, he thinks.
“That’s a shame,” he says, and means the increasing distance between the two of them as much as her growing separation from her family. He needs the space to think, though. His mind had been hazy and heavy when he’d been so near, his brain addled by the smell of dogwood and willow. She wants a family because hers’ wants nothing to do with her. Ramiel can’t understand why this would be, having grown up with two loving parents and a small but passionate support group besides them. He realizes it’s not always the case, how mothers don’t always love, how fathers aren’t always around - how fortunate he’s been.
Sympathy for the woman of Spring builds within him, but the emotion runs parallel to the questions also adding up. Was she born like this or did something change her? Was she wrought and shaped in the hands of something powerful like he himself was? He pushes his curiosity aside for the time being. Perhaps she needs reassurance now more than anything. “Family should be forever,” he says, shaking his head for her benefit as much as his own disbelief. “A gift?” The greying stallion smiles easily, “consider it given, then.”
Noori ducks her head, not noticing that he’s changed until she stands straight again. His smile has grown to an outright grin, some small hint of ego fueling its continuation upon his face. He’s happy when she smiles freely back. All traces of pride are gone from her features; this must be the real Noori, the one who exists when she’s alone, save for her thoughts. Spring is soft and warm; spring is life and new beginnings, surely its’ Mother is much the same. She seems to know, somehow, that he wasn’t always a part-time ghost. Winter found me, she says, and he understands exactly what she means, if not the context.
“Carnage.” Ramiel’s half-moon curved lips drop into an undisturbed line. Thinking of the dark god brings only a simmering anger that bubbles in the folds of his gut. So many victims, so much devastation and war and loss. He thinks of the black light now burning on the Other Side; he thinks of how close they had been to bringing her home. The young man doesn’t want to trouble Noori further with his own personal grudges, so he adds, “the bastard,” and smiles once again. The earthen mare seems content enough to share her own tale (and he’s ever so curious to hear it) so he turns the questioning on her. “Winter? Did he turn you into his mortal enemy Spring?” He laughs lightly, not knowing how close he was to the truth.
r a m i e l
what a day to begin again