It’s been more than two years, but Ivar would know her anywhere.

She is graceful even without an audience, as elegant and poised as if a crown still rested between her navy ears. Ivar watches her from the water where he is half-submerged, his chin resting on the bank and his flicking tail keeping him steady despite the current. The air is chilly but the water remains temperate, warmed by the same flowing magma that keeps Ischia an ever-tropical realm. With the autumn he has left his island more frequently, unable (and unwilling) to resist the bounty that Beqanna offers to a kelpie. Today had been meant to be such a day – he would sample what the meadow had to offer before returning to the sea and his lavender companion.

Instead, Fate has knotted his plans, and instead of a pretty stranger in his path it places instead someone who has almost become one.

The scaled stallion climbs from the river, and the water runs between the scales of his sapphire pied coat in a thousand rivulets. He has changed since their last meeting (his smoky dun coat is now brilliantly blue and edged with molten gold), but there is no mistaking the handsome stallion.

“Heda,” He says, tasting the word for the first time in years, and finding that it still sounds right. Though he had left Loess for the sea he had returned to Beqanna empty handed. The woman he had forsaken Heda for is gone – gone with their children – but he does not expect her to know this. Yet he is cautious still, keeping the distance between them even though he draws closer to speak.

She does not smell of their hilly kingdom, instead her buttermilk coat is touched with salt and sea-spray from her travels across the ocean. It intrigues the kelpie, just as her sleek figure and pretty face have always intrigued the stallion, and he takes a step closer despite himself.

“What brings you to the Meadow?” It sounds like such an innocent question, Ivar thinks; there is no indication of the weight it bears or the time that has passed since their last encounter.

His dark ears flick forward in interest; her rapidly pattering heart as irresistible to the scaled creature as a siren song. Heda doesn’t seem to react to his arrival, but when she says his name it is not with the venom he had expected. It emboldens Ivar, who takes one step closer, and then another.

For a while she doesn’t answer and he inches ever nearer, feeling the soft give of the soil beneath him. The leaves at their feet are crisp with frost, and the smell of a world preparing for rest surrounds them. Ivar has always enjoyed the autumn as a season (the activities that take place during it are only a bonus). He’d been raised in Sylva, after all. This fire colored world feels almost as much like home as the sea does.

Almost.

Heda answers, her voice as sweet as he remembers. She’d been traveling, she says, which explains the smell of the salt that permeates her skin and the feathers that are just barely out of reach. Ivar doesn’t reach for them (he recognizes a safe distance when he sees one), but he does lean to one side. The very picture of relaxation, the kelpie is, as though casual conversations with his ex-wife are an everyday occurrence for him. She’s tired of flying she adds, and Ivar recognizes the lie as soon as it leaves her lips.

“You’re never tired of flying,” he replies without a moment’s hesitation. He can read her as easily as she’d feared; Ivar has seen a weary Heda (has made a weary Heda) and this is not one. There’s no accusation in his low-toned words. He doesn’t mind the lie; it’s not as if he deserves the truth, after all.

The stallion knows that now is not the time for teasing, but the kelpie cannot resist.

“You came back to see me, didn’t you?” Another step closer, and he’s near enough to touch if she were to reach out. He’s also far enough away to dodge a well-placed nip, but Ivar has weighed the consequences and decided this is a risk worth taking. He has the autumn on his side after all, the advantage of hormones at the fact that the worst thing he’d done was abandon her. He’s here now though, and in the fading evening light he has eyes only for her.

He spread wings adds a further layer of darkness to the shadows cast by their bodies in the shallow sea. Ivar noses against the navy feathers, finding they are as soft as he remembers, downy and silken here at the joint of her shoulder. His curious lips rove across her withers then, toy with the strands of her navy mane until the lay more smoothly along her neck. The warmth of physical satisfaction gives a languidity to his actions that has been rather absent of late. Even her questions, unnecessary chatter in their afterglow, do not stir even a flicker of irritation.

“Yes, you can.” He replies as he presses his muzzle to the still fresh spill of red down her golden neck. She flinches away at the contact and Ivar grins, delighting in the way she holds him so firmly with her arching wing. The kelpie can’t recall telling Heda much of Isobell, but he imagines two monarchs running off with each other would not have been especially minor gossip. There is not use telling Heda that what he found in Isobell he will never find in her, and that the same is also true in the other direction.

“You’ll be happy,” he adds, rather than tell her: No, Isobell has vanished, pregnant with his twins and taking their son along with her. “Ischia is beautiful, and there are other mares there to keep you company.” He’s not ever told Kylin much about Heda, but he imagines the two of them might get along well. There’s the small issue of possession they each feel over the piebald kelpie, but Ivar suspects that if they’re distracted by raising his children they won’t be able to get up to too much trouble.

“Don’t I make you happy?” he asks, pressing into her the hypnotic command to relieve her most recent climax in exquisite detail as he nibbles gently at the curve of her smooth jaw.