With the constant flooding of visitors in and out of Hyaline, Iset couldn’t exactly say she was bored.Yet, here she was. Bored. Amet was off doing his diplomatic duties, and had left her behind after her recent not-so-successful stint with Nayl. 

Well how was she supposed to know she was the Queen? All she saw was a nosy mare and her son, and Iset calls them like she sees them. The metallic filly stomped petulantly through the brush, tamping it down with decisive and remorseless steps and grumbling to herself all the while. 

She wanted to go exploring, to see the world. Alas, Amet was too busy running Hyaline to come with her, and Sakir sightings had been few and far between since they had met up in the Forest. The sandy earth beneath her hooves became the enemy, and before she knew it she was throwing it in the air, stomping and kicking at it with sharp, shallow strokes. She may be a year older, but she was still capable of a full blown tantrum.

I mean, really though. Who wasn’t?

Movement from the brush behind her caught her ears and drug them forward before she had even realized that there was yet another newcomer to Hyaline.

Great. Just great. Another horse she would be expected to be kind to. But…-the wheels of her mind began to spin- Amet wasn’t here at the moment, so who would hold her to it? An excited grin touched her lips. 

This was going to be fun. 

A russet boy stepped out from the shadows of the red maples and the underbrush, his growing frame nearly quivering with what she could only take to be excitement and his eyes shining a with a curiosity that was apparent even from her position a few yards away.

“Hey! Rusty!” she barks, guiding her lithe frame to face him. The coppery tint of her coat reflects the sun as she shifts in front of the boy, ramping herself up for their interaction.

“What are you doing here? What do you want?"

Unlike so many of the others that had crossed the path and faced the wrath of Iset, this boy, Fox, was undeterred. His curious smile never drops, and it is this that catches her off guard. She has never come across someone that was immune to her callous venom, and it is this shock that renders her almost speechless.

Almost.

Her eyes narrow as he responds to her jab with goodnatured humor, something her sarcasm hasn’t been combatted with up until this point. “I think I’ll stick with Rusty,” she grumbles, unhappy with being caught off guard. She straightens and raises her head high, determined to gain the upper hand in the conversation once more, “My name is Iset. My brother and I rule the Lake,” a brief shake of her coppery head clears her mistake, “Hyaline, I mean.” 

Still growing accustomed to the change in name of their home, she often slipped and called it by what it once was. She barely has the words out before the boy is speaking again, rambling even. 

He sure talks a lot, she muses as he speaks of his curiosity, and it being his biggest fallacy. Her mind wandered while he spoke, her own curiosity prompting her to wonder what her biggest downfall might be, and if she would ever grow so comfortable in herself to be able to admit it to a total stranger. She doubts it, and then makes a valiant attempt to redirect her focus back to the words spewing from Fox’s mouth.

He then does something even more foreign than his extended patience with her attitude; he asks for her company. No one, besides maybe Sakir, had ever asked for her presence or aid in anything. Once again, she found herself knocked off balance by this stranger that she has barely spoken a handful of words to. 

Her temper rushed quickly to her defense, and although her words were infused with a little bit of extra bite, they lacked her trademark creativity, and in the end all she could come up with was, “Well, I suppose I have to now. I can’t let you just wander around poking your nose into things and fuck something up, now can I?” 

A bit of uncharacteristic excitement leaked into her tone as she addressed him once more, “So…” she begins again, trying and failing to sound completely nonchalant, “What sort of exploring did you have in mind?"

She sees an opportunity in the boy in front of her. An opportunity to escape Hyaline and the trouble she had caused. An opportunity for her brothers to be free of the burden that is Iset. His smile was infectious, or it would be if she hadn’t just resigned herself to leave the only family she had ever known. She winces lightly when he calls her a queen, knowing she is less than deserving of the title and wondering if she ever was. 

“The mountains are my favorite. We can go there first,” she blurted, her voice still hoarse from screaming (and maybe a bit from crying too, but no one had to know that). They would go to the mountains she would show him around for five minutes or so, and then he would be her one way ticket out of Hyaline. 

With a sharp pull of her head, she stumbles away, wincing at the pressure her steps put on her raw and bruised legs. “Lets go Rusty. Its a rough walk,” she gives him a once over, “especially for those who don’t know the terrain.” The sun began to scale its way down the cloudless sky, and Iset craved the anonymity the darkness would soon bring her. She stumbled more than she normally did when scaling the sides of the craggy peaks; the water that had ensnared her legs had caused her much more damage than she had previously thought feasible. 

She checked behind her once or twice to make sure Fox hadn’t fallen off into a ravine at some point during their hike, but otherwise ignored his presence. He was needed as a guide, a ticket out. She found a ledge that she knew could hold her weight and stopped there abruptly, the view of the place she destroyed, the place she once called home, taking her breath away. She stood there, frozen, enraptured by the damage she had done.
 

He never stumbles, never wavers in their journey to wherever it is they are venturing to. This impresses Iset far more than she would expect it to (and far more than she would ever admit to), for it took her quite a few treks into the mountains to traverse it’s surfaces as effortlessly as she did now. His meaningless comments pass right over her head, and though the sound of his curious voice reaches her, her jumbled head has no room to spare to make sense of the words. She stays quiet through his chatter, for once her rudeness unintentional and a mere byproduct of the clustered state of her mind. 

When she stopped in front of him he did the exact opposite, instead leaping in his merry way to take in the view that Hyaline provided. Once there, his happy-go-lucky expression faltered for the first time since they had met and his tone betrayed the confusion and concern that had arisen from the ashes. He turns towards her, but it feels almost as if his gaze goes straight through her. She is so focused, so honed in on the kingdom before them that his sudden movements startle her, and as he makes his way closer and closer to the edge of the cliff she finds some of her old curiosity reaching out to her again, imploring her to figure out what it is that Fox might be doing.

Head cocked, her attention had finally been drawn to something other than the destruction of her home (if she could even still call it that) for the first time since Levi and the other lost boys had intruded. The breath she had been about to take in caught in her chest as clouds gather around them, twisting their icy hands around the pair of them before dropping lower, to envelop the ash that blanketed the land. 

She couldn’t quite figure out what made her stay calm and silent as his power (whatever it was) descended over the land. After all, she had no way of knowing it wouldn’t bring even more destruction to those below. Perhaps it was because he seemed to be the opposite of Levi; Where Levi brought heat, fear, and destruction, Fox brought the cold, joy, and healing.

At least, this was her first impression as she watched a clean, white blanket of snow drape over everything that had been touched by the terror she caused. Tears sprung unexpectedly to her eyes, but she dismissed them as a result of the chilly breeze and blinked them away before they could be seen. 

Realizing that Fox was still focusing hard on the white canvas before them, she watched him curiously, seeing his neck darken almost imperceptibly with a thin sheen of sweat. A pleased smile touches his lips and his eyes fall back to her, making her blush slightly when she realizes she was caught staring. He seems to be awaiting a response, and because of this Iset tears her amber eyes away from his to fully survey the scene before them.

The icy tendrils the wind had carried tied themselves into branches and a trunk, and Iset stared in wonder at the new life that stood as a beacon in the center of Hyaline. “It’s beautiful…” she whispered, unable to force any more words through the tears clogging her throat. She glanced at him, his carefree smile and joyous demeanor infecting her own morose one and a small forgotten smile forced its way to her own lips. 

“You know,” she began, dropping her eyes as she pressed the words from her mouth, “I think I’ll be traveling for a while. Where do you suggest going first?” She kept her words and her tone light, even as the thought of being alone for the first time since she had escaped the Dunes had her stomach in knots.  

He watches her in a way that no one ever has before; curiosity and admiration tangle with something she can’t quite recognize. He turns sharply, that ever-happy golden gaze fixed solidly on her as its accompanying warmth slides languidly over her body. The tree he commanded to form before them stands proudly and chills the air around them, but the heat that pulses in their own little bubble warms her skin and brings a rosy blush to her cheeks. 

She knows that the destruction she caused hasn’t gone away permanently; it has merely been hidden by the pure blanket of snow and ice that stretches out upon the ground. However, it brings her some measure of peace to know that the results of her stupidity and naivety would be temporarily hidden from sight. 

His eyes lose some of their jolly mirth as they are trained on hers, yet they don’t become sad: merely more thoughtful than before. His focus switches between her and his creation once more before his gaze steadies and holds her in its grasp. At a loss for words for the first time she could remember, her mumbled, “Thank you,” took more effort to produce that her wordiest of arguments with Him or her her brothers. His next comment has her girlish blush intensifying, though she can’t quite figure out why. She had always fielded the attractions of the colts and stallions around her, but none had made her react in quite this way: the pace of her heart quickened slightly and her golden body seemed to be heating from the inside out. 

He propositions her then for her company, suggesting they travel to a place she had heard of in passing yet had not traveled to. Of course, there hadn’t been many places in Beqanna to which she had traveled, so this was not a surprise. Determined to pull the upper hand in regards to their conversation, she injects as much tired haughtiness as she can into her tone. “I suppose,” she says on a sigh, “That you could tag along, Rusty.”

She wasn’t ready to let her guard slip with this one quite yet; he seemed kind enough, and charming, but Iset’s thorny disposition wouldn’t allow her walls to crumble that easily. She side-stepped out of the way, giving him room to sidle up beside her. Though she in no way knew how to get to Tephra, her ample pride would not allow her to be led by Rusty here (or anyone for that matter), so she instead silently directed that the two would walk side by side as long as the width of the mountain path would accommodate them. 

“Let’s get moving. It still gets pretty cold here at night.” And with that, she started a slow pace, waiting for him to fall into step beside her before she could stretch out her legs and truly put her past behind her.