[private] bound between the tides of the sea

[Oceane]

O C E A N E

There’s a warm contentment that Oceane begins to associate with her time spent in the company of Soran. The scarred stallion is easy to speak with, to confide in, and there’s a comfortable kindness in his eyes despite the iciness of their pigmentation. She finds herself peering at him from the corner of her own amber eye more frequently than not, searching expectantly for shifts in his expression as Loess continues to unfold before them. But he seems more interested in their conversation than in the scenery ─ and while this makes warmth flood her face, she holds a certain amount of pride in her home ─ and sometimes she catches his eye when she doesn’t intend to.

Shrugging with false dismissiveness, the Loessian woman chuckles under her breath. “There’s still time,” she asserts playfully before finding a brief moment of silence where only their hooves and their breaths creep into her swiveling ears. When she and Soran both speak again, nearly at the same time, she can't help the smirk that finds her lavender lips ─ "Any day now, truly," she says with a sigh, before quieting at the dark shadow that passes over Soran's handsome, rigid face.

He avoids eye contact with her as he speaks of Melitusa and the pair he'd left behind, and this alone keeps her silent ─ even before he pleads with her not to ask why he'd left. Slowly, with understanding, Oceane nods her gleaming azure head and offers him a small, but kind, smile. "I left behind someone close to me in Nau-Aib," the Loessian woman offers him information about her past as payment for what he had been willing to share with her; she thinks of her two dead sons and the stallion who had fathered them, and it makes her heart ache beyond repair ─ maybe someday she will find comfort in the ability to share the demons of her past, but not quite yet. "Perhaps eventually we can commiserate together."

She leaves the offer there, making it noncommittal, and hopes that it will push away the nervousness that shines on Soran's face. She presses forward, moving the conversation along as he asks if she's excited and Oceane gives him an enthusiastic nod. "Absolutely, but nervous, as well." She shrugs her winged shoulders dismissively as their journey finally brings them near to the northern border of Loess, where the foothills give way to a small, winding sandstone canyon.

She leads him into a small gully that offshoots from the main canyon, where Lepis had led her to the prickly pear earlier in the spring. Sandstone rises like a natural barrier, effectively roping in the slightly-brackish pond and the sweeping willow, whose roots dig into the canyon wall. Beneath the boughs of the large tree lay an acacia that grows towards the pond, with a barren prickly pear bush at its angled trunk. Oceane sighs as she is suddenly awash with comfort at the sight she has chosen to birth her son. She turns her amber eyes to Soran, "Whenever you come to visit, this is likely where you will find me," she tells him kindly, though another question lay at the back of her throat. "Of course, you could always decide to call Loess your home, instead." She side-eyes him, giving him an out with the playful light in her molten eyes.


@[Soran]
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