which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.
Tarian takes the moment - the one where Lepis has placed him under grey-eyed scrutiny - to let the realization that she is Queen of Loess sink in. It’s not that she isn’t regal or noble; it isn’t that there isn’t anything in the way she stands that suggests otherwise. The grey pegasus has a met a monarch or two in his travels - different kingdoms with their own kinds of leaders and with them, their own approaches.
@[Lepis] certainly has her own and it leaves an impression with the pale stallion. A good one. He isn’t so usually at ease with strangers or informal with rulers and yet here he is, already revealing his dry humor. (A low form of wit, someone had once scowled at him. He’s always thought it a high mark of his intelligence.)
He watches her when she angles her head to the West and his deep blue gaze follows briefly, going from the blazing forests to the lush plains. "Empire?” He says and his voice drops just slightly. Tarian can’t help it. Something in him esteems the word. There is power and might in it; it sounds like it has been tested and forged.
It’s faint but the corners of his ashen mouth lift. "I’ve only heard that word used once before.” A history lesson half-forgotten but he remembers the way that his father had wielded it; the word had sounded commanding coming from Lepis and when Tarian repeats it back (another one of those rhetorical questions), he still likes the control his tongue yields over it.
While he follows, he learns. An ear stays flicked forward while the other moves, catching the variety of sounds that the canyons and ravines collect like rainwater. She has been both is what she tells Tarian. Lepis has known Loess since infancy and as a ruler. It makes him wonder if she has ruled this place since birth and if she has, well, it makes him all the more sure of where he has landed.
"If you could say only one thing to describe Loess,” he asks as they walk, "what would it be?”
They finally reach the spring and Lepis, appearing familiar with it, wades in while Tarian takes a few calculated steps. He lowers his wings and savors the way that the water flows through his feathers. The gray stallion lowers his head and finally drinks, relishing the sweetness of it. Where he recited his genealogy, Lepis gives a variation of her own. She’s descended from sea monsters and it makes him glance at her again, like he might have missed fins or gills before.
(To his relief, he finds neither. The thought of following a water monster to a spring sounds more like an ironic demise.)
"I find it hard to prefer anything to the sky,” Tarian says and brings his hanging wings back to his sides.
TARIAN