Deep in the forest he had retreated. The fiery chestnut of his coat dulled by the cast shadow of branches and the promise of a deepening night. He stood as still as the old and gnarly trunks that called this place home, only the rapid swelling and deswelling of his ribs betrayed movement as he drew breath ragged with anger, and his eyes pierced the ever-looming darkness with a vindictiveness he could not quench, perhaps did not want to. “Damn Lucrezia! Damn her, damn her!” He rage whispered into the night. If she hadn’t appeared… if she hadn’t meddled in it… distracted him… who gave her the right to be so high and mighty? Who gave her the right to decide what could be denied to him? “Never her.” He snarled through gritted teeth, never anyone.

So badly he wanted her to pay for what she had done, to make her regret every single time her tongue had formed the word fool at his expense. It was the how that was the question. Perhaps if he hadn’t been such an emotional beast and had been taught the art of restraint, his actions now would be different. But his life had mostly been ruled by his own urges, which had only been bolstered by the time he’d endured in the form of that creature. His lips curled into a sneer. Etojo had cursed his time as such a beast, and yet, in this moment, he’d discovered himself a perk. He knew how to hunt. And whilst he had been stripped of the tools to hunt effectively, he realised one does not lose the intuitional sense of how. He would find Lucrezia, he would track her down.

Beneath the shadow of nightfall, Etojo retraced his steps to the den and the hollow within. The inhabitants were long gone now, though a tinge of their scents still lingered on the leaves and twigs which had cocooned this place from the wider world. With a triumphant grunt, he found Lucrezia’s smell amongst the others. Both familiar and different, it was no longer the same smell she wore in her childhood, but he knew it was still distinctly her. The wheel was in motion, and with her scent riding within the nook of his nostrils, finding her was a matter of when rather than how.

Etojo tracked her with angry purpose, Lucrezia’s scent grew fresher, and the mark of a hoof imprinted in the damp soil of the forest floor solidified his direction. She was close… so close…

And yet, a tiny thought, cloaked in a veil of hesitancy began to stir on the outer rim of his consciousness. Etojo tried to keep it at bay, his anger and frustration was what fuelled him in this hunt when his desire for bloody satiation had vacated him. But the thought broke through as a rainbow does through a sun shower. And amidst the cloud of his anger, behind the deep burrows of his frown, bringing harm upon Lucrezia suddenly made his mouth turn dry and his pulse thrum with an uneasiness that he couldn’t ignore. No, hurting her would only bring forth more pain, more regret, further failings.

From the moment he had spied her, smelling of pine needles and cavorting in a whirlwind of ice and snowfall all those years ago, as King Rodrik’s daughter it had only seemed natural to him that he should want to guard and protect her - if it had ever come to that. The thought made him scoff and simpered his anger, he hadn’t hung around long enough to do any protecting. And Lucrezia, well, she had made it clear she could handle herself, his best intentions had always come across as meddling. In the darkness, as he stalked her smell from leaf to branch to trunk, in the fulcrum of his pursuit of her, he suddenly found irony in that. And Etojo paused his irrational hunt of her. He would track her no further though her scent remained irresistibly strong. Too strong…

“Lucrezia…” he called out into the darkness, his voice gruff though it didn’t leave his tongue with anger. “Lucrezia…” he called out again. The dark and stillness swallowed his words as easily as it threatened to swallow his past.

‘Etojo,’

She answered him in the night, and he spun to her voice and watched her emerge from foliage and shadow. Her body softly radiant beneath moonlight as the shadows peeled away from her skin and danced off the muted autumn hues of the feathers which fell softly against her neck. His eyes fell to just behind her shoulders, strong enough once to bare the weight of wings she had not been born with. Gone. He exhaled soft and long, he had not noticed in the hollow, so blinded he had been with his wants and his anger. The passing of time had changed them both, and he had only ever known one part of her and that was so long ago. Surely, she knew he too, could not be the same creature.

‘Is it fate again, or are you always looking for me?’

“You…” he bit his tongue. Held back his retort. He drew a slow ragged breath, and with a smidgen of fortitude he knew not he had, he damn well restrained himself. Her words rolling over his tensed muscles to fall unthwarted into the shadowy mess of thick foliage behind him. Fighting her had always led him into a hole too deep to escape from. Lucrezia knew how to provoke him, how to play him for the fool, turn him into one. How she loved to wave that word around, but he wanted more from her than her sarcastic stubbornness. In the dark here and now, he wanted much, much more.

“You have always distained me.” He told her, his rough voice almost resigned. “I looked for you because…” the words fell away into nothing and he shook his head as if it would help him make sense of it. Because he was supposed to? Was he? Lucrezia was no longer a child. Even then, she had seemed to spurn the presence of his mere shadow. No. He looked for her because now that he’d found her he didn’t want to let go. She was a tie to a past he hadn’t forgotten, he wanted that back, somehow, someway.

He cocked his head and stared at her, his eyes almost impassive though they could never look upon Lucrezia completely cold. “You have taken from me.” He stated simply. Because taking and hindering today felt much the same. If he could not have the blue filly, he’d have something of her. “I want something in return.” And he stepped forward, closer. His coat slicked cold and wet with a sweat brought of aggravation. And much as she did, though for a very different reason, he too glowed dimly radiant beneath the glow of the moon.

‘I could never hold you back truly,’

“You have taken from me.” He repeated. If that was not a form of holding back then she could call him stupid as well as fool.

She sounded perplexed by his revelation, and a part of him liked that he’d left her momentarily lost without her usual mockery. But it was true, she had held him back. Had done just that in the hollow. Another one of his plans had been foiled. But this time, instead of slinking back into the undergrowth a failure of a man because his own plan had been thwarted by his own hand, he blamed her. The way he saw it, she had taken away his opportunity to snatch himself a companion that would have been entirely impressionable. It would have accepted his flaws and eccentricities because at such a young age, he’d presumed the little blue freak would have known no better… or perhaps had no choice. It was easy for him to think that if Lucrezia hadn’t been there, her pointed glare seething with judgement, the outcome would have been different. He could have been more beast than flustered fool.

How could she not know that she’d always possessed some semblance of control over him? As much as he had loved to goad her, to be the bully, he’d only ever been able to go so far. Her needs, her wants, her way, well, they had always surpassed his in the end. He didn’t even need to ask himself why, he knew even if she didn’t. It was because she was of Rodrik. The only king he’d ever follow. The only man who could claim the unwavering loyalty of a beast such as he - and to the surprise of many no doubt - could have. Even if it was loyalty from afar and held from a time so long ago. He did not know where Rodrik roamed now. It was bittersweet that he’d found Lucrezia instead. Lucrezia, who had always met his bluff and did not feign away from it now.

She stepped boldly towards him as he had done to her. Her shadow casting across his swollen and bruised chest, the mist of her words coolly felt against the streaky sweat of his skin. ‘What exactly do you want?’ she asks of him, teased him. Her eyes sparkling with what he suddenly decided could only be some sick form of laughing condescension and nothing more. Did she not take him seriously? Having branded him a fool too many times to count, did she not think he could be anything more? Do anything more? It was impossible to become anymore tense without cramping. Once again Lucrezia had flung him into the start of another game he did not feel like playing but was nonetheless drawn into all the same.

“Give me damn strength!” he raged aloud to himself more than at her. “I was ATTACKED!” he snapped, his patience having worn thin. Did it matter that it had been he who'd originally had the intent on doing the attacking? Whatever. In the end that’s not how it went down. Clarisse’s hooves had pummelled him square in the chest. Gingerly, he prodded the tip of his muzzle against the sore mound of inflammation. It hurt. “This happened because of you." And he had no doubt a large bruise blossomed beneath the cardinal red hairs there, even if it wasn’t exactly visible to another’s eye. "You got in the way! And that thief of a mare stole MY foal.” It all sounded incredibly immature, yet he hardly found it in himself to care. “I want something to right your wrong.”

What did he want? What could she spare? Answers? Knowledge? Something more? Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted exactly, but the idea of taking something more than he deserved felt good. Especially if it was from her.

He hadn’t meant to fall into this game. But for a wonderful moment, so fleetingly brief, he thought he’d won.

There was a shift in her expression, subtle, but gone was the mockery. He watched her gaze shift to roam across his bruised and battered chest. An inkling of concern fleeting in the delicate crease of her brow, he did not wish to imagine it. His tension softened. He thought about saying something uncharacteristically mushy, not an apology, because he wasn’t at fault. But perhaps something friendly, softer, and less weighted with accusation. He hadn’t intended to be this brash, he had sought her out for more than this. “Lu…”

‘Your foal?’

There was a ring to her tone he wasn’t sure he liked. But yes, that’s what he’d said. That little blue freak should have been his.

‘She was not yours to claim, by her own free will she was able to choose.’

Huh? He stared at her, mouth falling partially ajar like a fool.

‘Maybe you are just upset because she did not choose you.’

No, he hadn’t won. And to him, Lucrezia’s smile grew beautifully cruel. The pretence of any victory he thought he’d had gnashed to shreds by those ivory teeth he glimpsed behind the lips of that mocking grin of hers. He’d never admit that she’d nailed it. No one chose him. A fact so unbending it’d become solidly instilled into the core of what he’d become. Bitter and angry and twisted. He shut his mouth with a strangled sound, part growl and half other. He’d have surged to evaporate what was left of the shadowy air between them himself had Lucrezia not already began her dogged loom towards him. It was almost too similar in the way he had done to her in those days when he had been bigger and she had been something he thought he could control. She didn’t do it like he did though, too much flounce. Although he supposed there was something powerful to be said in the way she clomped closer, slicing through the crap to finally expose the bare bones of his matter. He’d always admired those who could do away with all that fluff, and she did smell oddly magnificent.

‘Then tell me what you want’ she says, her breath so close and hot that it ate through the fine hairs of his face and seeped into his skin. He wanted to snap at her bloody vengeance, among other things, though that wasn’t the heart of it, couldn’t be, there were things he didn’t know, had missed out on. He reasoned that the puzzle which had thwarted him was one she could solve. It was how to make her do it that he found himself unfortunately stuck on. He clenched his teeth and sucked in a deep inhale of air. Forget the foal, be friendly… she did smell good… And he tried very hard to look beyond her mockery, even if that meant not looking at her. “Your father, King Rodrik… is he…” still king? Still alive?

She was impossible. So stubbornly guarded he felt as if he was paddling in a lake with no bank in sight. Of course she wouldn’t answer him, not on his terms. It drove him internally wild, every damn memory he had of her was jumbled in a frustrating unknottable mess. If she’d been anyone else… if she hadn’t been King Rodrik’s… if he’d still had his fangs and that insatiable appetite, she would have made a damn good meal. But Lucrezia had always been more than nothing. So much more, that he caught the subtle shift in her face, that fleeting moment of stunned surprise that on anyone else would have gone unnoticed because he just did not care. Etojo cocked his head, and it was all too hard to stop the smarmy smirk curving the edge of his lips. “Yes, King Rodrik.” He corrected her quickly in much the same way he’d corrected himself. “Where is he? I’ve business with him.” It all sounded rather conceited.

No. It sounded terrible. And the realisation was enough the smack that smirk from his face. “Err,” he floundered. He’d been angry, she’d fed that. He’d wanted to hurt her, yet he would never dare inflict upon her pain. He was confused, conflicted, frustrated. And yet through all of his self-tangledness, he knew he’d sought her for more than just a game… for more than just stubbornness and tension. She was his past. From a time when he’d been afraid of little and nothing. It had been so long before he had been near to anything familiar. Time out there, in the wilderness of the wild world and his own head, had blended into an endless crescendo of simply living. Deep down it had felt good to find her, even if she had interfered in what was to be a grand and pivotal moment of action.

“Lucrezia…” he tried again.

His eyes had lost their hardness, his face softer and daresay oddly endearing. Could she somehow see he wasn’t the enemy he’d often have her believe? And suddenly he’d had quite enough of the dark tension that enveloped them much like the distorted shadows of the night. “I didn’t find you for this.” He conceded. Whatever this game was, it was over. And Etojo regarded her rather solemnly, perhaps for the first time truly looking at her. His dark eyes searching her nutmeg ones, roaming to that crown of feathers he’d always thought were odd yet had grudgingly accepted – they matched those wings she’d once had… a dark thought he swiftly thumped back down.

She was not the same, but neither was he. Rodrik could wait. After all, he reasoned that his devotion to King Rodrik had always naturally extended to his daughter. Usually, he wasn’t into touching, but she was so close and so warm and her scent so exotically pungent that he couldn’t help but reach for her. And he pressed his nostrils roughly against the blade of her shoulder and inhaled deep. “You don’t smell like pine needles anymore.” he muffled gruffly against her skin. “That’s how I knew you were important enough to matter once.” He pulled away and considered her with a mix of both wonder and uncertainty. “What is it you smell like now?”