I break chains all by myself; lupei/any

[lestrade]

sorry I took forever. also let me know if the falls thing isn't okay. <33

I'm telling these tears, "Go and fall away, fall away."
May the last one burn into flames.

The petulant boy had grown up some.

The mint green and violet dipped boy had grown taller and sleeker. His Arabic blood could be determined by the slight dish to his face and how high he carried his ombred tail. But these weren’t near as refined as his mother’s features had been. He seemed to be growing taller every day and his muscles strengthened and became leaner. 

He was on the delicate precipice between adolescence and adulthood.

Lestrade had survived the war unscathed. The mint green man (whose coloring strangely resembled his own) had secreted him away from this hated place and placed him secretly within the neutral folds of the falls’ embrace. He had been abandoned with a simple command to stay put until he was then quietly retrieved. 

The boy had to reluctantly rely upon the wolf-man for he seemed to be the most stable figure in his life. After his violent separation from Azlyn, he hadn’t been the most approachable nor social during his stay here. Instead, he remained an outsider for the most part - completely uninterested in integrating himself within this kingdom full of psychos and weirdos. 

So his petulance had evolved into a little bitterness.

It was certainly understandable, given his separation had been caused by a chamberling to begin with. But he remained ignorant of his mother’s fate – whether she had escaped from that frightening wall of fire or not. It was a memory he often relived; the heat of the flames looming overhead and the desperation in her voice when she cried out his name in alarm.

But time had tempered his instinct of sticking close to the border in hopes of Azlyn returning for him. He’s grown comfortable enough to venture out from the thick forest of pines every once in a while if he was sure there weren’t many other kingdom-dwellers out and about. He’s recently discovered a most curious thing about this place. If he ventured far enough into the clearing where the lone pine stood, he could feel a mysterious beat beneath his feet; almost as if an actual heart lay deep below the earth.

Lestrade

mint & violet son of lupei and azlyn.

[Lupei]

lupei

What the truth is, I can't say anymore

The heart beats for all of them. For Lupei, for Dacia, even for Lestrade. They cannot escape it and the fact of the matter is: they don’t want to. The Chamber is tied to Lupei’s blood, it flows in his veins and directs his life. Eventually, anyone would come to see that everything he’d done had been for her, the Chamber. Zojja and the boys posted in Volcanic Village, bringing Umqra here to watch her grow under his command, the whispering news that his sister had given birth to Killdare’s twins (an occasion he’d missed, causing his innards to twist into a guilty knot), all of it was to ensure the growth of his Kingdom. The Chamber’s influence would spread far and wide now.

There is, however, a loose end of sorts. Lestrade, the oddly colored colt-turned-stallion that had been under Lupei’s careful eye for some time now. Since that mare had ended up leaving him here, perhaps through no fault of her own but still doing it, he’d taken it upon himself to check in with the boy every now and then. He’s unsure why he can’t commit to the idea of being the young stallion’s sire: It’s obvious to anyone. That same mint green base coat, the same identifying features along the jawline, there - in the shape of the eyes. But it’s a nagging sort of discrimination he has against the kid. Lestrade seems … traitless.

He’d never witnessed the boy shift, never seen him call flame, never even hoped to find something out of the ordinary in his actions. So he’d spirited him away to the Falls and unceremoniously dumped him there. Always the good father, it would seem. Time slips on though and one thing Lupei understands clearly is revenge. If he couldn’t fix what he’d never begun to build with Lestrade starting now, he may come to regret it one day in his old age. Fate has a funny way of doing that to horses around here.

So he finds the boy by smell, tracking him down quickly since he’s chosen to stay near the edges of the kingdom. Always outside, never within the throng. He greets him horse-to-horse, a little changed since they last saw each other. The great, twisted tangles of Lupei’s mane and tail are gone, and his right shoulder sports new, permanent art. “Lestrade.” The elder brute calls, slipping past the shadows of a leaning pine, “You’re alright?”