04-19-2021, 12:36 PM
She is the last to return home, but the only one Yanhua had been expecting. He knows better than to hope for a glimpse of that tell-tale flame between the foggy kingswood, and he knows he should be in the north by now, but he simply can’t go. Not without Amarine. Never without her. The rest of the forest dwellers are home now, tucked into their favorite places or out enjoying the return of the sun. Yanhua dwells where the light hardly breaks through the tree cover, places he finds that cause him to shine his brightest, and he waits for her. They are all waiting for her.
Languid, the tall chestnut did his rounds and checked in with his loved ones. He met newcomers and old relations, listened to his daughters talk about the midsommar fair and everything they had planned with a gray, knowing smile. Spent his evenings with Borderline because she’d not really gotten better, not fully, and raised his sons with equal measures patience and pride. The days stretched into weeks.
In the back of their minds she’s there: her presence is like any other ghost Yan comes across in his walks. They imagine the sound of her voice and what it would say in response to certain things. They all say how much they miss her, and Yanhua agrees deeply. This home is not the same without the butterfly mare. Her absence is a heavy weight that unbalances the scale.They are happy, but not as happy as they should be. They talk about her in the present tense, unlike how they talk about Lilli in the past, and so they hope.
And like the sun returning, so eventually does Amarine.
It was the cry of a flock of birds that caught Yan’s attention at first. “Someone’s approaching.” He’d thought absently, unable to see the way they took flight from so far below a canopy of evergreen tree limbs, but he pictured them lifting and swelling and dispersing all the same. He knew what they felt - fear - at having been disturbed, and took off in the direction of their now-quiet covey to intercept whoever might’ve been using the distant road into Taiga, not expecting to see her. Amarine had made her way back onto one of the main traveling routes from the common areas; she could’ve been anyone, any thing, and (stupidly) Yan had expected her to appear like Leilan had that day. Out of thin air.
He’d been trotting, but the moment he broke a bend in the path and saw her there in the distance it felt like he was flying. His hooves hardly touched the ground; the distance between them vanished and he didn’t care if it was overwhelming: Yan was touching her, smelling her, murmuring senseless things as he pressed his head carefully against her own and felt tears of anguished relief rolling over the edges of his coppery cheeks. And then he was calm; for her he could empty his mind in a minute and just breath without a thought. For Amarine he would pour out everything, hollow himself so that she could fill the space left behind.
He was shaking, but not from fear.
YANHUA
@[Amarine]