Circinae;

[Circinae]

oh, my love, don't forsake me. take what the water gave me ..

He was the last one she had expected. Jinju had been no surprise, anyone else would have been a pleasant curiosity, but not Ruan. Never Ruan.

In her silent, knowing way she simply wanders. Those soft, brown toes of hers dig greedily into the carpet of pine and leaf while she rambles, fluidly, over root and hill into the darkest hearts of her homeland. Her eyes are kept low to skim the earth absentmindedly while she thinks of each homecoming before this one and she remembers: at every return, Ruan had been present - the silent, wary sort of guide she always seemed to chase but never catch. A ghost of the Taiga, her leader. Her Alpha. But he was nowhere now and yet, simultaneously, everywhere at once. Peering out with hooded eyes from behind a bloodred trunk, wisping through the shadows some feet ahead, coming towards her with eyes that equal her own astonishment…

When he sinks before her, prostrate in his disbelief, and buries that ebony nose so deeply into her scruff that she can feel the vibration of his wavering breath, Circinae exhales and allows her eyes to flutter near closed. She’s silent, willing the moment to stretch impossibly while her heart cries out wearily from her chest. Pain and pleasure are twins, two sides of an equal coin - He’s whole, healthy, and he’s come to her once more. She could drink him in, if he’d let her, but of course … of course he won’t.

His retreat leaves her weighted like a stone to the spot, but the sadness never touches her eyes, her lips, when they rise to meet his own. She’s still the little brown wolf to him, still the one who came when he called. She always would be. From atop her shoulders her sleek head tilts, that creamy tail placed distinctly above her hips waving slowly as she steps hesitantly forward and arches her back, skin undulating and rearranging while she shifts fluidly up to horse again. A breathy sigh escapes her lips upon completion, those bright eyes disappearing behind soft lashes while she takes him in again, wholly different. “I missed you.” The blue-framed mare admits. She’s too old and too worldly for skirting around the truth.

“Missed home most of all, though.” She murmurs with a grin. Around her are the sights and smells of comfort, commodities she dreamed of those lonely nights away, but she has no wish to look at them now - only to watch him carefully and measure the space between them. “Am I that scary?” She prompts with the same tell-all tilt to her head, indigo locks shrouding her gaze. Or is it something else that scares you…

Circinae