He’s never chosen to share this particular spot with anyone before—perhaps because no one has asked or perhaps because it’s always felt like a secluded paradise. Somewhere calm and quiet and entirely his own. Somewhere he can retreat when the pressures of the outside world are too much—when he can feel the edges of himself begin to grow hazy with the stress and the burden of it all. This becomes a place where he can finally drop such weight, place the armor down for just a second so that he can simply breathe.
But he finds that he does not mind having her here with him.
Does not mind sharing this paradise with her.
He watches quietly as she takes it all in, her exclamation causing his crooked smile to grow just a little wider on the edges. “Once you get past the sulphur, there’s quite a lot to enjoy about Tephra,” he teases, humor warming the masculine angles of his face. He’s well aware that others may not appreciate the bitter bite in the air or heaviness of the humidity, but he’s not able to see anything but this: the beauty it births.
He falls silent again though, content to let her take it all in, moving between the flowers, that rise up from the earth and drape from the branches above them. The foliage is diverse here, the rich soil producing a perfect mixture—exactly what was needed to create a greenhouse, a bouquet of the exotic.
“What is your favorite place in your home?” he asks quietly, angling his head to the side.
He’s never spent much time in Hyaline, or the Cove, but he cannot imagine that a mare like Ilma would spend too much time in either if she did not find them beautiful and pleasing in their own right.
MAGNUS | I don't belong to anyone, but everybody knows my name
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