Ciri

Once Padme and Mourna are more settled and feeling as comfortable as they can in the tundra lands, she sets off to find the Isle’s Champion. She had remembered Leilan’s request to seek out the Hersir and speak with him concerning night shifts so she makes sure to address this task as quickly as possible.

Looking for Nashua gives her an opportunity to explore more of the Isle and she comes to find that now every part of the island is completely covered in snow. The more she heads south the snow seems to melt and fade, leaving more exposed dirt and granite. It’s slightly warmer in this area and she makes a note to move the little family further inland if Padme doesn’t discover it first. She had worried that the cold might be too much for a little one but this gives her a little more hope. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a wild choice to move her after all.

It’s on the burned beach that she finds the winged stallion. Carefully picking her hooves through the sharp pieces of glass scattered amongst the pebbles, she makes her way towards the pegasus while simultaneously taking in the remains of what had once been a beautiful shoreline. it was still pretty in it’s own way, a rainbow of color reflected from the dark soot that stains most of the sand. Still the devastation is clear and she wonders what had caused all this destruction.

“Nashua?” She calls to him when she’s a few steps away, mercury eyes sweeping over his chestnut figure, taking in the hawkish wings and glowing gold stripes that wrap around his legs. “I’m Ciri, the new Thane.” A ghost of a smile sweeps over her dark lips, swirling silver strands unwaveringly holding his own gaze once it’s turned to her. “Leilan suggested I should find you.” A single strand of raven hair falls wildly across her forehead, slightly hiding the savage scar slashed across her eye. The rest of her body exposes a violent story, only a few patches of unmarked skin remain on her smoky coat. There's always a slight twitch of discomfort when meeting someone new, when she would fall under the scrutiny of their gaze and see the questions lurked there. Still she keeps the whisper of a smile steady on her lips and waits for his acknowledgment.

all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was

Ciri

She is guarded as she normally is when meeting a stranger but his lopsided smile is quick to put her at ease. As he turns to meet her, she catches the ravaged marking across his chest with a glance, and visibly relaxes a little more. It seems she might be in good company and her smile changes from a polite smile into a bright grin.  “Likewise.” She acknowledges him back with her own nod, titling her slashed skull to remove the obstructing forelock as the last tightness of trepidation in her chest begins to fade.

There had been no sign of Leilan since she had offered herself to the Isle and he had accepted. She was unaware that the frosted roan had left and that the stallion before her had taken his place. She had been distracted with making sure Padme and Mourna had settled in ok, still relieved that Padme's ideas mirrored her own. The northerners were a hardy breed and if they could do well here... They would be fine anywhere. It’s perhaps better this way, being ignorant to his promotion. Allowing some freedoms between them where the formality of titles can’t restrict them.

He doesn’t beat around the bush and she gives a genuine laugh at the roguish grin, shrugging a scarred shoulder as the swirling strands of silver meet green once more. “I agree.” She raises a brow, a curiosity lingering in the mercury depths of her gaze. Her stars are dim in the brightness of the day but they still hover protectively around her. Always there, always watching. “I’m pretty much an open book. What do you wish to know?” She assumes it will be a question about her many scars, it’s always been a conversation starter, but maybe Nashua might surprise her.

all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was

Ciri

Hyaline had been an idyllic place to live. The Isle was a drastic change but drastic was exactly what she had needed. Her life in the lake had taken up so much room in her mind and heart that she had almost drowned in it, submerged beneath water that filled up her lungs as she scrambled for the surface. Meeting Gale and Padme had helped ease the loneliness, coming to the Isle and finding purpose had helped even more. She no longer constantly thought of the life she had once had. And while she still thought of Amet, memories of him no longer threatened to pull her completely under.

Nash doesn’t ask her about her scars and instead his gaze lingers on her stars that blink dimly around her. It’s enough to make her warm to the stallion and she listens to him as she falls into step beside him. Her hooves sink slightly amongst rough pebbles and dark sand but she doesn’t mind as her swirling silver gaze looks out at the nearby sea. He speaks of Taiga and a brother, Yanhua, a name she’s never heard before. He also speaks of children and their mother and this brings an old familiar pain but she shoves it away roughly before it can chase away her smile.

“I was born in the Falls, the old lands.” She starts. She tells Nashua about growing up there, about her kind mother Soliel and that she had never known her father. She tells him of her adventures growing up when she finally left and when the world remade itself, of how she learned to fight and traveled for a year or two as a nomad. There is no hesitation when she speaks of how she fell into the Underneath, of the Leshen and the ravens and the Siren in the lake. She tells him how she found out that she came from the stars that night and how she washed up on the lake of Hyaline when the Underneath spit her out.

It is here that she hesitates, for this is also where she had not been able to continue with Gale when he had listened to her story. Both stallions were good listeners but perhaps it’s because she had started this time at the beginning and now feels the need to finish it, to get to the end, that she slowly continues. She tells him of Jah-Lilah and Amet, the ruler of Hyaline at that time. How Jah had also been in the Underneath and helped Amet to cure her from the fever and infection Ciri had gotten from the battle below. She tells him of how she fell in love with gold scaled stallion, how she then met Castile, and how it all stupidly fell apart around them, teenagers who didn't understand the price of love. She tells him of the son she bore only to be whipped away by another portal before she could even give him a name.

Something in her is unleashed and comes spilling out, words and stories that had been held in for far too long. She can’t stop even if she wants to, can’t seem to make the torrential downpour of her life stop falling from her lips, although she makes room to answer any questions that he has or to fill in blanks from spots she might have missed. By the time she is done, after she has told him of the other world and finding her son being raised by Jah-Lilah and seeing Amet again before being whisked back here when that world broke apart, she feels ten times lighter. As if a ton of weighted bricks have suddenly been lifted off her shoulders. And it is with a laugh that she finally turns a rather sheepish look to him, apologies in her swirling starlit eyes.

“I’m so sorry. I haven’t told my story in a long time. Not the full of it anyways, Gale only got the first few chapters.”

all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was

Ciri

It is easy to converse with the striped pegasus and as they amble down the shore, they fall into a rhythm of chatter as if they had known each other far longer than just these few minutes on the beach. His story is just as interesting to her and she listens to the tales of old that he recalls. It is nice to wax nostalgia on a time long past that she had forgotten. They swap stories of their bloodlines (hers falling more from Kings of the Tundra with a healthy mix of Chamber and Amazon royalty) from what little she can remember her dam telling her.

He listens quietly to her account of the Underneath and he seems to know the proper times to interject but it is not until they reach those matters of the heart that she becomes the quiet one.

She had always wondered what had happened to Castile. It seems the other dragon that had once snagged her heart had done some wondrous (and terrible) things while she had been gone. She falters in her step as she looks at the burnt wreckage and sinks her hooves a little deeper in the sharp glass as if maybe she could feel some part of the stallion she had once known. It had always been dangerous to love a dragon. She had known that. But part of her had loved him all the same even if it was Amet that she was beholden to. She has lingering questions about the shifter but holds them close for now.

There is understanding in the swirling silver of her gaze as he speaks of the loss of his mother, of being raised by his aunts, and of Leilan being the father he had never had. Jah-Lilah had become a second mother to her as well when her own had disappeared long ago and she easily bonds with this stallion in this shared experience.

When he thanks her for sharing her story and then with a lopsided grin admits that Gale is another brother of his, she can’t help but laugh in pure delight. “I should have figured. He said the exact same thing to me when I finished telling him of the Underneath.” What a stroke of luck, she thinks, that she has come to reside here with her friend’s brother. She tells Nashua briefly of being spit back on the shores of the lake in the darkness and coming across Gale not long after when the light had returned. How Gale was the first friend she had made besides Padme in her return to Beqanna. Her mercury gaze sweeps over the burnt shores again and she can’t help but see Castile’s touch in every grain of sand and every reflective piece of amber glass. How had she missed it before? “Peace is an accomplishment in itself, let alone worldwide.” She says softly, noting his pride and thinking it well placed.

She hesitates only a moment before she meets the bright green of his eyes. Because there is something that is pricking at the back of her head that will bother her until she asks. “Does anyone know where Castile is now? Is he still alive?”

all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was

Ciri

It had been strange to fall asleep one day in the lands of old and then awaken in an entirely new one. It had still been Beqanna but… different. Magic was a strange thing that she couldn’t wrap her head around sometimes but she tries to explain to Nashua how she is far from immortal and time had always seemed tricky around her. She knows the terms of both the Brotherhood and the land of Sisters, having once had a mind to join the jungle ranks if she ever grew tired of wandering. Her familial lineage is limited but she tells Nash that most of her ties with those two kingdoms specifically rested on her maternal side. Her mother had rarely spoken of her own dam, all she knew was that she had been brutally murdered well before her time and it was too painful for her mother to speak about. She had learned a bit about her great grandfather Cross, a brooding man with red eyes that had once ruled the Tundra and served many other kingdoms. His stories were legend among his kin, having many rivalries and adventures under his long life including several wars and plenty of love stories sprinkled throughout. Not all the stories had been kind or pleasant about him but he had done enough to be remembered in various ways it seemed. She was unaware that he actually still lived having outsmarted the Afterlife, a secret kept from them all.

As Nash fills her in on yet another brother, she chuckles softly and amusement sparkles in the metallic swirls of her gaze. “How many of you are there?” She teases lightly and wonders what it was like to grow up with such a close knit family. What did it feel like to have a sibling you could confide in? She explains to him how she had always been an only child as far as she knew. There had been mention of her possible sire once, Atrox, but she had never truly explored that option of trying to find him. Once she had been curious but now she didn’t see the point anymore. Family was what she would make, she had decided. It couldn’t be based on blood alone.

He catches her up on other major events that she had missed and other things she had not been aware of and she takes it all in with not many follow up questions. Eventually though it leads back to Castile.

“Fae magic” he explains and despite the hurt she still carries from that time in their young lives (when Castile had turned his head away from her when she had needed him most) she can’t help the pang of pity she feels for the dragon she had once known. Despite what they had gone through she had never wished him ill and she hopes that wherever he is now he has found peace. At the mention of kin in Loess she recalls the massive black dragon that had flown over the meadow, covering her with its large shadow, and she nods her head knowingly in response. It didn’t scare her to think of the scaled beast then and it still doesn’t now, despite knowing the brutal fate that had followed Castile.

She had always had a thing for dragons after all.

“We’ve been chatting all day and I didn’t even tell you why I came to find you today.” She finally says with a bright grin, making it clear that she hadn’t minded their talk at all. Quite the opposite. “Leilan suggested you might need someone to take over night patrols. As I’m at my best beneath a night sky,” A toss of her muzzle behind her to indicate her stars, ”I thought I might offer myself for the job.”

all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was