do you feel like a young god? any

[Amet]

if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes

Amet is still trying to find his way, still trying to fight deep-seated numbness that He had instilled over the young boy's childhood. The Akhal-Teke had learned by the time he was one and a half that it was easier to detach than to fight what had become inevitable. It didn't matter how much Amet fought, how much he plead, how much he tried to make Him proud - the despicable King of the Dunes would not give up his verbal or his physical lashings.

The arrival of his siblings, just as Amet turned two, had made his life both easier and more difficult at the same time. They offered him a reprieve from his solitude and they made him laugh when no other living creature had ever made the attempt, but oh... how he had hated to watch Sakir and Iset suffer at the hands of Him.

It was easier to simply be numb.

Not here, though. He has found so far that Beqanna is rich with good, kind souls. The young stallion is not naive enough to believe that there are no bad apples, but none have reminded him of home or of the horses he once knew, and that made him feel truly happy.

Amet thinks that this one, too, is a good soul. Amet can see it in the way her bright eyes shine and in the way she shrinks from his compliment with modesty and embarrassment. The dragon king finds that his grin has widened involuntarily and then, just as swiftly as she had appeared sheepish, Tang is returning his expression with a grin of her own.

The painted girl turns from him to bide her time, Amet moving his plated legs to follow her even before she turns to look playfully over her shoulder. They move beneath the canopy of his favorite wisteria, the hanging boughs safely shielding them from the outside, Tang's voice soft and almost hesitant: I'm just visiting. The young boy had hoped she would stay, of course, but he's in no place to protest. So, he gives her a kind nod instead and flutters his ears in her direction as she finds her warm voice once again. "We can wander around the Lake, if you'd like," he pauses, his heart thumping a sudden staccato against his narrow ribcage, "Or we can stay here." Here, beneath the canopy of the lovely lavender tree he had claimed for his own.

Amet