09-15-2017, 11:12 PM
if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
Amet tells Ciri most of his story, just as he had promised. He leaves out some important
He can see the way she watches him as if inspecting every word or searching for a hint of something hidden as it flits across his face. She knows that he isn't giving her all of the details, of that much he can tell and yet she doesn't pry too far, which leaves him feeling thankful.
He settles his scaled body comfortably on the soft grass, face to face with the smokey black mare as his own story drifts to an end and he inquires genuinely of hers. Ciri's words are sheepish as she begins, nearly distracting the young stallion with the appealing crook of her smile. He is curious, though, of where she had come - Amet is tempted to believe that she had been born in Beqanna, used to the magical sights and earthly upheavals the way an implant like himself may never be.
He's never heard of the Dale, though he's been told countless stories of the Reckoning, when Beqanna erupted into something entirely new, a consequence of the Fairy's rage. She talks of her mother and her father, of wandering and helping. Amet smiles, his amber eyes alight with realization. "I knew it," he jests warmly, "Only helpers refuse assistance from someone else so stubbornly," and then he realizes they are one and the same.
Amet falls silent again to allow Ciri to finish her story, though the stallion is unable to hide the small frown that twists at his lips soon after. I don't have a home or anything, she says, and he nearly reaches out to nudge her cheek but he stops himself suddenly, quelling the desire for physical contact to let her finish her story. He wants to know it, after all, and he doesn't want her to think that he's not listening. Ciri offers hardly more than a brief statement about the Underneath and just as she had not pushed him, he refuses to push her. The red wytch had told him what she had wanted him to know, and now the golden stallion is hesitant to force her into a conversation about her trauma.
His mind flashes him back to that night, when the soothsayer had found them and sung her lullaby; when she'd mixed the healing paste for Ciri, just before the battered mare had succumbed to the darkness, an unfamiliar word on her lips: Atrox. He has wondered about it on occasion, opting to bring it up when the mare feels comfortable enough to talk to him about the Underneath instead of simply dropping the word (name?) in front of her in hopes that it wouldn't stir anything scarring.
The starry-eyed girl drifts into silence, her gaze moving passed him, and Amet involuntarily reaches for her with his soft muzzle, pressing it to her cheek gently before recoiling with a kind smile. "You could stay here, if you wanted. There will be plenty who need your help," he says quietly, his heart beat starting to beat heavier and heavier against his chest again. "And I'd like to have you around," he tacks onto the end, his amber eyes searching her's anxiously.
Amet
@[Ciri] ♥
