She’d died, but she hadn’t stayed dead. It had been in this second life that their tentative friendship, forged in times many living couldn’t remember, had been tempered to what it was now. They were kindred spirits, and love came in many forms. A stranger who came upon them now, pressed against each other, and did not know them would assume they were lovers. Anyone who came across them and did know them would perhaps assume worse – neither of them are, after all, unattached. Scorch has her long-time husband, one who died alongside her and lives beside her again now. Brennen has a mate and a Queen as well; not his first or only, but one he has been quite loyal to for a time now. He loves Galilee – they are not exactly exclusive, much to the confusion of some he thinks would be better off too mind their own business, but he has been very much pickier in other dalliances since she came back into his life.
The bay king, though, loves her as well. Loves her in much the same way he had once loved a painted queen of the waterfall – enough to generally keep his distance, maintain a close friendship, and watch her love her mortal lover until the end. Perhaps it is a fault of his – to love so deeply, even those who are better off loving another. For now, he just savors the contact that she shares with him, and listens quietly to her stories as she had listened to his. It helps, to have shared the lives of his lost. They start to be less of an overwhelming wave of grief threatening to crush him, and more of a warm blanket of memories like his other children who have been lost. Those he knows of, and those who like many of Scorch’s children have simply disappeared into the wild world, never to be seen again. (Once, Brennen had though no loss could hurt as deeply as losing Bethanie in the midst of battle, but losing Khaeli on the cusp of her life was at least its equal).
His attention sharpens, focuses as she pulls away, meeting his eyes again. For a heartbeat the bay stallion is confused, a frown darkening his face, but then those amber eyes widen when he realizes what she’s saying. Brennen is not unfamiliar with the ability to speak to the dead; he has a granddaughter and several further descendants who can, but it hadn’t been something he understood or could help them with, and often had pretended it didn’t exist. Kellyn, especially, was a volatile creature and a strange one; once after speaking to traveling in ghost-time she’d come back pregnant, and the sire many years deceased. It had seemed best to avoid asking her to use the skill, when it resulting in things like that.
But Scorch is more stable than Kellyn had ever been, and she doesn’t pair the ability to speak to the dead with the ability to move through time (that he knows of). Indecision wars in his face for several long, quiet heartbeats. His own fear of knowing how they passed plays a major role, but so does his desire simply to get a proper goodbye. The silence stretches, he begins to grow tense, and then his friend speaks again – says they are asking for him. And that is the end of Brennen’s hesitation. “Please.” he croaks the word, forcing it past a veritable mountain in his throat. “Tell them that I love them. I didn’t mean to fail them. I was trying to protect them.”