the firestarters always get the burns
and the good guys never get the girl
Sturdy winter grass crunches beneath their hooves as they walk, but Ilma finds the sound and accompanying smell soothing enough. The white mare follows the shy-sounding roan, noticing the winter flowers and the evergreen tree livening up where Noah touches them. She confirms to herself that Noah gives herself far too little credit, but then again, that’s just the roan mare’s nature. Not something that needs to change in any way.
”I certainly would like to. I’ve been here once before, but I must admit I didn’t get the chance to look around much. I’d joined the group searching for the first spring flowers, to help find a cure to the plague.” she tells the mare, more for conversation-making than that she wants to imply anything. Sometimes, she thinks, it’s easier to have a conversation that steers away from politics than to try and find, and put, meaning in every sentence that is outed.
Following the winged mare uphill, Ilma looks at the creek and sparse trees with a smile. Some of the valleys in Hyaline were just like that - a few lonely trees, flowers blooming (albeit not as much), grassy hills. Colder, for sure, and the creek is not the same as the large clear lake, but still. It’s peaceful. Had she been looking for a home to settle and never look back, this might just be it.
”Hyaline.” leaves her mouth when Noah asks, then she shakes her head. ”Not anymore, but the Hyaline when it was a sanctuary, and a place for the young to grow. When Solace ruled it.” She can’t be sure if Noah knows about the Hyaline as it was before. ”Before the shifting of lands and the plague. Now, I wander the world, and try to heal what I could not when I was tied to a certain kingdom.”
She eyes Noah sideways. ”Although I sometimes wonder if I should not just give it up, and pretend the world and politics don’t exist. Let wars and kings rage as they come and go.” She smiles sadly, thinking of how Castile would reject her every advice before she’d even outed it at the time. Seemingly already knowing what she would say or do, not bothering to ask. Lepis, leading in a similar way - making choices she thought were for the best, disregarding the fact that there might be a third option.
Was it still worth it, rowing against the stream?
@[Noah] have some inner ramblings and a sad ilma, apparently (: