She's got the devil's eyes
She had once been a child filled with dreams. Though that is now a very long time in the past, she is reminded of that youth. Of the girl she’d once been who had viewed the world with much kinder eyes. She’d never been so joyously free as Astana (even then, she’d seen too much of the world through eyes not her own), but she had been a very different version of herself. A better one perhaps. Gentler and kinder, most definitely.
Unfortunately age and time and the careless vagaries of the world and equine nature had hardened her. Had sharpened to edges of her soul until anyone who drew close now would be in danger of cutting themselves wide on jaggedness she had honed to protect herself. It’s regrettable perhaps, but she could not hope to undo it. Not anymore.
And maybe that’s why she doesn’t send Astana away as she should. Because in her, there is hope. Out of reach for her, no doubt, but close enough she could almost believe.
She knows Astana had been exploring. Knows she had met others, had developed the tender feelings young girls are so prone to developing. Heartfire had once not been so very different. She’d even once believed she had found a forever love. Had known rage and anguish when that had been torn from her. Were she inclined to look more closely, she might have realized that was the beginning of it. That was where her first ragged edge had been shorn sharp.
But she’d never particularly cared to look that closely.
Astana’s joy, her wild grin, is almost infectious. Heartfire’s lips tilt slightly in response, blue eyes less sharp than they might normally be. The golden girl is so freely open with her emotions, living in the moment as much as Heartfire lives in the past. She suspects Astana would have loved anywhere she might have ended, but it is warming to see her look with such bright love onto the land Heartfire had claimed as hers.
“I am,” she replies simply to Astana’s enthusiastic question, though she does not reply so immediately to the remaining inquiries flung her way. Those are much more difficult to answer. Not nearly so simple. After a moment of consideration, she continues slowly, “I suppose, in a way, I did.” A faintly sardonic gleam crosses her gaze as she turns to stare at the waves. “Although, I think being queen is more of a side effect of what I truly wanted.”
She doesn’t expand on that further, though she doubts Astana fully understands that rather enigmatic statement. After a few heartbeats where she says nothing further, she turns her gaze back on Astana. “Would you like to hear a story?” she finally asks. To the child it no doubt sounds as though she’s changing the subject. “Of when I was young?”
and they'll cut you like a weapon