[private] loved and loved

[Tarian]

Tarian doesn't dream much anymore, but when he does, it is always of his birthland. Sometimes he doesn't remember what the dream had been about as much as he can remember the clean, sweet smell of spring water. Of how he sometimes wakes with the thunder of the Falls still drumming in his gray ears. Of how he remembers his dark mother and her green eyes would light up (those have come more recently and Tarian tells himself it is because of Cheri, a girl who reminded him of Minah and Maren). Of his father and the last fight that occurred between them, the one where Tarian had goaded his father about his broken promise to Valerio: 'What happens to Aunt Elena if Frostbane finds her? What good is your word if Aunt Lilli finds the edge of the world and falls off?'

He had felt Malachi's anger like a coming storm but Tarian had stoked it anyway. Something that made him feel powerful when they had all been rendered so helpless by the loss of their home. 'Who next? Will you let Kildare wander away?' And he can still remember his father's sharp command, one that is still ringing in his ears when he wakes. 'Enough,' Malachi had proclaimed. Tarian remembers the rest of the argument as he starts to move away from the nook that he had rested in and tries to leave the past behind him there: the way that he had curled his dark lips at his sire and had said, 'No. You will just leave your mother to wallow beneath that tree, abandoned to the elements and her grief.'

As he rounds the one Redrock corner, he tries to forget the way his father had galloped after him. The way that he called out to Tarian after they had both ran for miles. 'We have raised you better than this. Come home when you can show us a better reflection of that.'

What would Malachi think of him now?

What would he have thought of his son as a mercenary? Not fighting because the cause had been the right or just one, but because there had been something to gain from it? What would he have thought about Tarian spending so much time in Jay's celestial grotto and yet still harboring so much doubt about fate and destiny? What would he have thought about Tarian staying in Loess - not primarily out of sheer duty or loyalty - but because this is where he had found the fallen body of his brother, Kildare, and something in Tarian couldn't bear the thought of leaving his younger siblings ashes alone in a strange place?

And that is what Tarian is thinking of when he rounds another corner. That is what is thinking of - such free thoughts that any Magician or mindreader might see - when he sees her. The gray pegasus stops for a moment, struck by the sight of Minah here in Loess. How? Some part of his mind wonders. How was she here?

She isn't.

That is what his intuition tells him. This is an illusionist, somebody with the Magic to see what he would keep hidden and Tarian - once Heir of Paraiso, former Commander of the Liridon Guard and now Champion of Loess - bares his teeth at this imposter. "I will give you until the count of three to shed that shape," he warns the strange thing. "Or I will rip it from your skin."