again you’re gone, off on a different path than mine
i'm left behind wondering if i should follow
Lepis knows his face well, she knows she’s surprised him. She’d known she would even before she’d spoken. Power is not something the dun mare bypasses easily, and the piebald stallion in front of her knows that better than most others. He knows what it feels like to have the weight of an entire nation of his shoulders, but not quite how it feels to share. But Lepis does, and that is not something she wants. At least not with the black and white stallion who offers her the chance to choose her own title.
“Let me get back to you,” she tells him with a smile. He mentions Djinni, a mare she knows only from his stories of Nayl and the Mage. The name brings back emotions from childhood: warm contentment, satisfaction, family, and she allow them to glow through her.
Then he tells her he has a proposition. Her blue-tipped ears flick forward, and her eyes brighten. It might be excitement that speeds up her pulse, or it might be the instinctual reaction of a grey animal to the growing incisors in Castile’s mouth. Whatever the cause, she nods. Keep things interesting, he says, and she knows she will be leaving Loess for this particular task. The mare leans forward to better hear his whispered request. A direct move against the North is what he suggests, an unquestionable act of aggression.
Perhaps a war would lure him out into the open?
That she even thought that is distressing, and Lepis is still for a very long moment. Her cheek is pressed against Castile’s, and she is still lost in thought when he pulls away and jests about vacations. She comes back to herself with a soft shake of her mane that sends her navy tresses askew. The men in her life might charge headlong into chaos and discord, but Lepis’ reluctance to do so and her own dislike of captivity meld to add a question that she voices when she finally replies: “What will be the terms of their early release?”
There will be terms, her tone says, even if all she gains in the end is something as simple as a favor owed to Loess. The red kingdom had functioned in such a manner under its third king, favors bought and paid, and it is the model of government that Lepis had always favored above all others. She remembers how simple those days had been, and manages a smile. Some things are necessary. “I assumed the Isle had frozen through,” the mare says with a smile that looks rather wry, “It certainly felt cold enough to do so the last time I was there. ”
LEPIS
i’m the one who sees you home--
but now i’m lost in the woods
and i don’t know what path you are on |
