So much pain is fraught between the two horses, still practically strangers, but both are unwillingly to delve deeper. Instead, they cover their ache with little hints that you couldn’t decipher, small smiles, and distractions of the eye. Of course, Warrick wasn’t as good at it seeing as his affliction was his first – it was still fresh and new, pouring freely from an open wound. He has been trying frantically to cover it, though the fact remains that any attempts at bandaging were futile. Time was really his only friend and once healed, a hardened, twisted scar will remain.
He likes Djinni. He likes that she is interesting and mysterious, so unlike himself. He has nothing to offer her, really. He enjoys the fact that despite this, she stays. She seems important – as if he should have known her just by laying eyes on her to begin with – and emulates significance. He likes her attention to him, and he thinks that maybe – just maybe – someone finds him interesting, too.
“What is Sylva like?” He is still getting acquainted with the new names of the lands around Beqanna, but this one seems familiar. He thinks about where he is from, though now it is irrelevant. The Gates are no longer what they were when he was just a colt, and the name of his mother, Orani, was barely on other’s lips. Perhaps there was a chance that someone would remember her, or even his twin sister, Beyah. But even then, he knows that the Gates is not where he is from. He is from wherever Beyah and Orani are now, without him.
No one has to say it, he wants to tell her, his mind drifting back to his moment of despair when he was left behind on the mountain as they ascended into the stars, breathing in thin air with large gasps, heart pounding wildly inside his ribcage. His family abandoning him was all that needed to be said about who Warrick truly was: no one.
He tosses his head, as if tossing away the painful memory (of course it is still there, choking him). A hint of a smile, soft yet forlorn, finds his indigo lips. “I live in Tephra, if that’s what you mean. Though even you know that an actual place is not truly where you are from.” Again with the subtle hints, desperate in his attempt to keep his pain hidden yet frantically wanting to share with someone at the same time. He continues to tiptoe around the truth, as if he could walk by quietly and not awaken it. He wonders if she will press him further about it, and he had half of a mind to let her.
“Is this really you, then?” he asks curiously, referring to what he now knew as her new appearance. He wonders about the bangles, if they held some sort of magic in them or if her chameleon-like powers came from her own entity. “Or is that for you to know and for me to find out?” He laughs gently, bumping her shoulder with his muzzle in jest.
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