give me reasons we should be complete

[Tarian]

He doesn't know why he thinks of Lovelace - the Immortal healer from his past life - as Yadigar turns his scaled face towards him. He doesn't know why he thinks of Lovelace and her garden. He doesn't know why he imagines the herbs she used to dry at the opening of her cave or her shy smile that gave way when the expectant mothers sought her out. He doesn't know why he thinks of the lesson she gave him that day.

His lessons had been sparring sessions. His lessons had been tactics and formations; all the discipline that was required of a soldier and expected of an heir of Paraiso. They had been made-up of patrols around the valley, of history lessons of his ancestors and the wars they had fought, of the enemies they had defeated (they were always the shining, golden victors).

One day though, one lesson had been with Lovelace.

Instead of patrolling the borders, instead of reciting history, instead of memorizing battle strategy, the gentle healer had smiled and said: 'I'll be your teacher for today, Tarian. Follow me, please.'

And they had walked. Walked all through the morning, past the high noon sun that beat down on their backs as they came to the edge of the ancestral valley that Tarian was to inherit. He had kept his irritation pressed to a thin line against his dark mouth. The sun had already peaked and started to fall towards the west by the time that they reached it.

An apple orchard.

Tarian had stood, disbelieving as he looked around the outskirts of his home. Lovelace had offered that quiet smile and said: "do you know why I have brought you here?" The young prince had scowled, with none of his father's patience or his mother's stoicism. "No," he had retorted and then thought himself restrained for saying only that, prided himself on it. What use did he have for walking through their harvest grounds? What was the point in coming the fringes of their kingdom, one of the few places that the frost could touch? That smile - flourished and blossomed into something else. "Do you know how they grow?" The healer had asked, angling her dark head towards the trees burgeoning, branches heavy with the promise of fall harvest.

Tarian blinks, retreating away from the memory. But he remembers. The frost, she had said. It needed the cold -  the freeze - to break the seeds open so they could turn into saplings. "They can't be coddled," she had said.

Is that what Pangea is like? He wonders. It needed the brutal (bitter) chill of something to awaken it? Not unlike the spark that @[yadigar] had spoken of, to awaken Loess. "Forgive me for not laying down my life willingly," the silver pegasus says sardonically. Tarian has survived much and even if there are things that he doubts - a past that rankles him, losses that leave him bitter - the gray stallion knows he does not die in a dusty wasteland.

What Yadigar gives him is a truth - as brutal as the jagged canyons and sweltering sun - and so Tarian repays him in kind. The older stallion shrugs again, adjusting his wings as they settle against his sides. "I've a lifetime of soldiering and so if any of your young want a sparring partner, I offer what knowledge I have. There are many places I've been outside this realm and so if they desire to know, I will share that." If that is nothing that Pangea desires, well, that is not Tarian's plight. The laws of Beqanna had named Yadigar victor in his steal, so perhaps that diminishes his abilities in the beasts mind.

Still, he regards his galaxy-marked captor. This nameless thing he speaks of - this thing that breaks down the weak and remakes them into the strong - Tarian is curious of this. He decides that perhaps, even if he does nothing else, to learn what it is might be a valuable use of his time here.