09-21-2019, 07:00 PM
For quite a long moment, Lepis simply frowns, her grey eyes narrowed (though not necessarily at the roan mare ahead of her). It is clear that she is thinking, turning over not only what Heartfire has said to her but other things as well. Bits and pieces; facts and strings of knowledge that have no meaning by themselves, but that she has always been certain that she can place together in a comprehensive woven whole.
Heartfire seems determined to throw knots into her weaving, to insist that the thread Lepis wants here should instead go there. The Nerinian Queen is wrong, Lepis knows, because how can they both be right?
"Perhaps we think of peace differently." Lepis finally says, and it seems she will ignore the insult to her diplomatic skills, the threat of destruction, and everything that has been said in between.
"Perhaps you just don't understand this quite the way I do." The dun mare doesn't mean to project, but such unconscious acts are not uncommon. As Heartfire has found out, and as others have suspected, Lepis' skill with diplomacy does not really lie in her silver tongue. She does get what she wants - she almost always has - but it is the intangible gift she's always possessed that put such things within her grasp.
She is careful, with a decade of practice and precision in her ability.
"I will not give up Taiga." She tells Heartfire again, and the words are not the only thing that drift in the space between them. Admiration comes too, chosen for Heartfire because it is not so unbelievable an emotion for her to feel for Lepis: this woman who refuses to back down.
Not too heavy, Lepis knows, not quite enough that it will strike Heartfire as unnatural. There is a fine line, and she means to skirt it carefully.
"I mean to bring peace to Beqanna." She tells the roan mare. "If you cannot understand my methods" - and she might now, with the emotion Lepis had sent earlier, but she cannot know for certain - "Then I ask that you at least accept that I have good intentions." Lepis does, at heart, mean well, and this earnestness is reflected in more than her subtle use of empathic projection.
"If I'd listened to Castile, like you suggest, we'd stand amidst ashes. Nerine is no more than tinder to a dragon - Beqanna is nothing but tinder." This time there is nothing but her words, and the brightness in her eyes that dares the roan mare to contradict her. Heartfire had been there, Lepis knows; she had seen Tephra burn. They live in a flammable world, but only one of them holds sway with the firestarters.
"But I do not want war. I do not think Castile truly wants war, for all that he and his allies are ready for it." This, perhaps, she lies about, for who can truly know the mind of a dragon? What she does know, though, is that she is more than capable of gentling a monster if the need were ever to arise. "Perhaps it is him you should speak to," Lepis suggests, "Perhaps he can convince you why I feel Taiga would be far safer under Loess' protection than that of the North, since you find it so hard to take me at my word."
It hovers, the softest bit of emotion at the edges of their conversation, the lightest touch of the exact emotion that might sway Heartfire to most seriously consider the Comtesse's suggestion.
@[Heartfire]
Heartfire seems determined to throw knots into her weaving, to insist that the thread Lepis wants here should instead go there. The Nerinian Queen is wrong, Lepis knows, because how can they both be right?
"Perhaps we think of peace differently." Lepis finally says, and it seems she will ignore the insult to her diplomatic skills, the threat of destruction, and everything that has been said in between.
"Perhaps you just don't understand this quite the way I do." The dun mare doesn't mean to project, but such unconscious acts are not uncommon. As Heartfire has found out, and as others have suspected, Lepis' skill with diplomacy does not really lie in her silver tongue. She does get what she wants - she almost always has - but it is the intangible gift she's always possessed that put such things within her grasp.
She is careful, with a decade of practice and precision in her ability.
"I will not give up Taiga." She tells Heartfire again, and the words are not the only thing that drift in the space between them. Admiration comes too, chosen for Heartfire because it is not so unbelievable an emotion for her to feel for Lepis: this woman who refuses to back down.
Not too heavy, Lepis knows, not quite enough that it will strike Heartfire as unnatural. There is a fine line, and she means to skirt it carefully.
"I mean to bring peace to Beqanna." She tells the roan mare. "If you cannot understand my methods" - and she might now, with the emotion Lepis had sent earlier, but she cannot know for certain - "Then I ask that you at least accept that I have good intentions." Lepis does, at heart, mean well, and this earnestness is reflected in more than her subtle use of empathic projection.
"If I'd listened to Castile, like you suggest, we'd stand amidst ashes. Nerine is no more than tinder to a dragon - Beqanna is nothing but tinder." This time there is nothing but her words, and the brightness in her eyes that dares the roan mare to contradict her. Heartfire had been there, Lepis knows; she had seen Tephra burn. They live in a flammable world, but only one of them holds sway with the firestarters.
"But I do not want war. I do not think Castile truly wants war, for all that he and his allies are ready for it." This, perhaps, she lies about, for who can truly know the mind of a dragon? What she does know, though, is that she is more than capable of gentling a monster if the need were ever to arise. "Perhaps it is him you should speak to," Lepis suggests, "Perhaps he can convince you why I feel Taiga would be far safer under Loess' protection than that of the North, since you find it so hard to take me at my word."
It hovers, the softest bit of emotion at the edges of their conversation, the lightest touch of the exact emotion that might sway Heartfire to most seriously consider the Comtesse's suggestion.
@[Heartfire]
