[private] If you wake up in a house that's full of smoke // Oriash

[Rhaegor]

Silver Cove. Right before Solace fell ill. She needn't say more for Rhaegor to understand. He stood as one of the welcoming party to his mothers when they returned from that far-away place they went to sleep in the hopes of saving both mother-and-child in one of nature's contrary passages of life. As a man, he cannot fathom why a mare might easily -- or at least, without complication -- birth triplets, and then experience hardship with a singlet; but as a man of some decency, he respects these mysteries and considers them with awe and almost a religious fear, father as he is himself to children now with Dawn.

Those were trying times for our mothers, Rhaegor allows. The political topography of Beqanna changed in front of their eyes and in a blink, the world no longer had need of the  sanctuary they dedicated their lives to. I cannot imagine being pregnant during such a tumultuous time. He flicks an ear and pulls a face. Not that I could imagine being pregnant in the first place, really.

I have a tendency to keep to myself.

Rhae nods. I have adopted such a tendency myself, of late. It turns out that the world no longer needs once-princes, either. It serves me better, now, to occupy the quiet places.

I'm glad we finally met as well. I'm Ori.

Ori, Rhaegor thinks to himself. A beautiful name.

Rhaegor perks his ears to listen to the rest of Ori's words, and laughs with her at her grin and shuffling-wing gesture; beneath the surface, however, he hears her thoughts. Badly, in truth. A pull at his stomach begs him to press her for more, to pry into her heart lest he might fix its brokenness; but years of practice wielding his telepathy stay his advance, the wisdom of respect outweighing the misplaced good-will of mind reading. If things are going badly for his sister, the least he can do is help her to enjoy this moment, now.

Grinning, Rhae takes a step forward and tosses his head in excitement. With his wings already unfolding at his side, he stretches his face towards his sister's and parts his lips. From them, the softest of words escape, a signal to his fast-increasing comfort with the new but already-familiar character before him:

"Let's fly."

And with that, the stallion leaps into the air, beating his wings in powerful downstrokes until he gains the sky around him and the earth beneath him. Here, his voice grows, the constraints he feels on the earth loosened by the freedom of the air, and he lifts his voice in a pitched and whinnying-song of mirth and contentment; with his sister beside him in this cavorting dance of the skies, for the moment, all is well.

.

@Oriash