on and on we go; ashley

[Ea]

Ea

but now I'm pulling all the strings

She is never truly at peace.
Something stirs within her - a restlessness. Ea can still hear her mother’s voice in her head: never relax, always stay one step ahead of everyone else. She had failed when Kirin came along, failed by leaving her home vulnerable as she lived in bliss with Ramiel and the new twins, and had paid for it by losing her home. Again. Thankfully, Kirin disappeared shortly after winning, and Kerberos had invited Ea and the rest of her family back to the island. She’d gone, of course - she knew no other land besides the one she had made for herself and her family.
 
Most of her family - blood or not - was gone now. Sabrael stayed on the island - Ischia’s protection - but Allure and Grimdark were grown now and liked to wander. Ea would see Allure on the island every once in awhile, playing with others her age, but she was much less attached to her mother than she had been as a foal. Wallace had stayed, too. But the rest - Tiphon, Phaedrus, and Vida - were like ghosts. Though, truthfully, Ea hadn’t sought them out to see if they were around at all. The island was big enough that you could live there and avoid everyone else - Ea had done so for years on and off. She preferred to disappear to one of the smaller islands off the coast of the main land. Ischia’s main island stayed relatively secluded as it is, but the other surrounding islands were essentially uninhabited. Just the way she liked it.
 
Today, however, Ea’s restlessness brings her to the River - a land she had yet to visit. It’s a short swim from her island to the coast, and she can see from a small distance groups of horses standing together and chatting. She moves closer to the dull noise, with the same posture that she’s always had: smooth and quiet, head held high as if she were still important.

[Ashley]

Ashley moved as if he'd been punched. The very power that had given him the ability to have such grace was gone, and in its place was a man who was learning how to live life once again as a newborn foal looking to be recieved into the world. What was there for him without his magic? What blessing was there in his blood?

The red dun stallion walks to the river, always by the coastline. He has not been in the water since He had gone down into the afterlife. He has not chanced it. Fear of drowning..fear of dying were real things for him now and he wanders this way and that looking for some sense of life outside the fragile existence that his life has brought him. Even though he has been stripped of his powers--more like they exploded out of him, and that little electric bolt had gone off with his mother God knows where--he still has his wits about him, and the smell of the air gives way to a body he has not seen since... that day.

Betrayer.

He would have had to have been blind deaf and dumb not to feel the hackles rising on the back of his neck whenever he could sense her. His former queen and leader had been someone in whom he thought he could trust, but like the most fragile flower on the island--their home, not just hers, the one THEY created, not just her--she had withered away with the changing season, showing her beautiful head only when it seemed to suit her best.

But, history was exactly that. Without his magic, he had much bigger things to be concerned about.

He sees her then, coming up the side of the riverbank, and he instinctively turns away. A conversation he is not prepared to have--no matter how much history was behind them.