His son had asked him about love and Savior had told him about Tephra.
He had told him about the way his own parents had made him a protector. They had built him to defend their home, crafted a dragon fit to battle dragons. Savior had told him how his magic was tethered to the earth there, how the earth lived in his veins and in his bones. He had told him about how he dredged his happiness out of the dirt, his lifeblood out of the lava that cut rivers across the terrain.

He could have told him about all of the ways he loved the boy’s mother, too. How naturally it had happened, how she had emerged from the snow like a dream, how he had not wanted to leave her side since. But Worship was just a boy and Savior understood his love for his home better than he understood his love for Casimira.

Casimira, whose company he has so scarcely been without since the twins were born. He ventures off today, though, because he knows they are safe and he imagines that she must crave a bit of solitude. He knows how oppressive his company can be.

He follows a lava flow to the river, using the deep orange glow as a guiding light through the crushing darkness. They have remained largely untouched by the malicious things that he has heard lurk in the shadows, fortunately. Isilya had lit the lanterns, lending them light, and he has to believe that this helped to keep the monsters at bay. He has been prepared, though, ready to defend his home the way he had been bred to. While he had been born in a time of war, it had come to an end shortly after his birth and he had never really had to consider what he might do if he were called to arms.

It has been quiet so far but he is under no illusion that his purpose in life is anything other than protecting Tephra. He can feel it stir just beneath the surface of his skin as he reaches the river, edging his way away from the place where the lava seeps into the water and dips his head to drink.

He tenses at the sound of splashing water and abruptly lifts his head, his muscles pulling taut in unison. He can feel the dragon scales rippling beneath the surface of his flesh in preparation of the shift from equine to dragon. But the form that comes swimming out of the darkness is that of a horse and he immediately relaxes, releasing the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. 

Her greeting is warm and his expression softens around a smile, this glimpse of light such a stark contrast to the darkness that gathers and creases around them. They are strangers indeed, but he trusts that she calls Tephra home considering how easily she moves across the terrain. “Hello, Wishbone,” he returns her greeting, ducking his head with that same warm smile. He is grateful for her overt friendliness, relieved to find another reprieve from the stress of life in these terrible shadows. 

“My name is Savior,” he tells her, studying the purple plains of her face through the darkness, only briefly distracted by the bird that alights in a branch overhead. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says. And he means it, certainly, though he wants to add that he wishes it could be under different circumstances. In the sunshine, definitely. In Tephra’s full glory. The plants are dying without the sunlight to nourish them and he grieves their deaths. He cannot save them. Even the flowers in his hair have wilted.

“Have you been in Tephra long?” he asks, hoping it doesn’t sound rude. He has been in Tephra his entire life, designed as he had been to protect it. His powers weaken the further he strays from its borders. He is tethered to this land. He suspects that if she had been born here he would have met her already. Or, at the very least, seen her from afar.