Emotions war on the jaguar mare’s face when Talulah ask who she seeks. She can see the play of hesitation followed by determination before sliding once again into discomfort. It’s a vicious cycle that the metal mare can’t possibly understand, but she can be understanding at least. She knows what it’s like to battle one’s emotions. She knows how the heart can be pulled in two completely different directions. She’s loved (loved? the admission catches her off guard briefly) two men at the same time but in unequal fashion. Love can come in many forms, now she knows, but her heart wasn’t as quick to catch on.

Somehow, she sense that it isn’t love or the loss of it Tantalize is searching for. There’s a dark undertone in the way she carries herself, a resignation to learning the answer she seeks. It’s as if she’s waited years for this bad news and carried the added days up on her back. There’s a shame, too. What can the source possibly be? She takes a deep breath, and Talulah feels the name will come out on the exhale.

She isn’t wrong, but the moniker that stammers out surprises her.

Lion.

“Lion?” she repeats, stalling for time and trying to hide her own loss on her face. The man had been an anchor for her, a constant in a world that had taken everything from a girl whose life had just begun. He was always there, her golden sun that she had placed on high, a constant on her horizon. She had mourned his death like all the other deaths she has come to experience: by never forgetting any part of him. The sunset of his life had been just as difficult to witness as the rest (her mother and father) but she had been there beside him through it. Talulah thought she knew everything about the once-king. She knew the bad parts: the stubbornness, the occasional disappearances – but she certainly didn’t know them all.

“I’m so sorry, but he died. A long time ago, now.” Decades, she thinks, but is too preoccupied to really figure out the number of years. Her amber eyes watch Tantalize carefully, concern radiating in her gaze. If they were friends or lovers, this will be hard news, certainly – but something makes Talulah suspect it is not the case. She remembers the hesitance in the Amazon’s voice, the careful way she’d constructed her words. She wants to find him, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been a happy reunion if she did. The steel woman leaves out all the words she wants to spill of the golden pegasus, all the praise she would have otherwise heaped upon the man who had once watched over her. Something tells her to use caution, so she asks instead: “how did you know him, if you don’t mind my asking?”

t a l u l a h

metal woman of the dale

She doesn’t anticipate tears from this woman who had so boldly walked into a foreign kingdom without a second thought. She doesn’t expect that she will have to bear the weight of a grieving widow. In learning of Lion’s death, Tantalize seems built stronger (emotionally if not physically) than Talulah. If she had heard Tiphon had died (or Ramiel, or Eldrian, or Tiberios, or any of her friends) she truly doesn’t know how’d she’d react. Selfishly, she’s glad she doesn’t have to find out today; she’s glad she is on the giving and not receiving end of such news.

Oh. The syllable exhaled by the other mare is so quiet, she thinks she’s imagined it at first. Oh means it’s not the answer she’s expected. Oh is a searing disappointment as understanding travels from ears to brain, then brain to heart. It’s a shared loss, at least, though it will probably be little comfort to Tantalize. She doesn’t know how Lion had ruled the Dale. She doesn’t know that he’d ruled young orphan Talulah’s life in much the same way: as the wise, patient, golden teacher. Sure, he’d had his faults. He’d come to them as a raiding rebel, after all, back when a mercenary group had overtaken the silent land. But he had stayed because he grew to love it and its people. He’d been too quiet at times - wrapped up in whatever else held pieces of his heart – but he’d always come back to the welcoming arms of his people.

Talulah’s own breath catches in her throat when she remembers it all. Sometimes it’s too easy to overlook the past and take it for granted. Often, one forgets to remember the dead and their exceeding impact on the still-living. Inadvertently inducing grief in the jungle mare makes her relive her own. She finds it cathartic, dredging up memories of the old pegasus. She realizes, though, that’s it’s still a fresh wound she herself has opened for Tantalize, a wound she still cannot place the source of. Because even as she says it, the brown mare looks down, averting her gaze from where it had been held with Talulah’s. She looks past the hooded eyes, sees shame where she ought to have seen only raw grief. What had Lion held over this foreign mare?

She soon confirms the Daleans’ suspicions. Lovers. Of course. Only love could make sense of her reaction. That Lion had a secret life apart from the Dale doesn’t surprise the metal mare. Surely he’d had his own tragedies and triumphs that he kept away from the public eye. Tantalize says it hadn’t ended well, and she wonders if the shame stems from this fact. Perhaps the jaguar girl had broken it off herself and regretted it after. She can’t imagine how wrong she is in this assumption. “I’m sorry,” she repeats again, because she is. And then because she wants to lift the other’s spirits some, in whatever small amount she can, she adds, “I can assure you he was much loved by the Dale and its people.”

t a l u l a h

metal woman of the dale