[private] standing by the river watching my bridge burn down; jenger pony

[Levi]

His story fades off, and the sounds that rise to fill its absence are potent reminders of his past. The rhythmic hiss and crash of the waves, the crackle of the embers dying down, they are heartbreakingly familiar and warm - a bittersweet balm on his weary soul. He is often practical, but as he lays in front of the fire with his unfocused gaze cast towards the horizon, the press of so many memories on beaches just like this one is not something even he can resist. One memory stands out above the rest, one with a beautiful blue girl and a shy smile that had brought him to his knees. The moon had been a sharp sickle crescent on that night too, he remembers, but he hadn't had eyes for it as he does tonight.

He too had been given a chance for a family, dysfunctional yet no less meaningful. But he had let it slip away from him, he had no one to blame but himself. Rapture had been everything he wanted, he had dreamed of her for years. Yet, when the ugly, broiling storm in his breast has risen, he had ridden its winds wherever they took him, and they had taken him far from home. But the sound of someone approaching, soft breath just off-beat of the churning ocean, pulls him back to the present.

Levi's weight shifts as he turns to look back over his shoulder, mistrust and suspicion are easy to read on his face although he had planned to keep a stoic calm. The firelights dances across the points of the stranger's armor, and as his eyes look out into the dark that is all he sees. She is a constellation of her brightest points and reflected firelight, distilled down to her summits, and he doesn't want his vision to adjust. But he invites her closer with a gesture of his broad head, and spares a glance for his daughter, still sound asleep.

The stranger steps into the firelight, and finally more of her is revealed. Her mannerisms offset any discomfort he may have felt at her appearance, he was well acquainted with unfriendly greetings and a harmless exterior was just as likely to be hiding terrible power as any monster.

He had returned to Tephra to be interrupted, to be found. He could have wasted years more in the common lands, and he may have if it weren't for Coal. That the intrusion comes in the form of a gentle whisper and a soft, almost smile sets his mind, and body, at ease.

They have more in common then they know - all these feelings they can not name, or maybe just feelings they are afraid to look at. This could be what keeps him looking at her instead, what keeps him grounded where he lays and hoping she will join him.

"I can only tell one story per night," he replies, but his voice never regains the gruffness he usually placed between himself and new faces. "It's policy. If I break the rules once, that one will never let me rest." Another gesture, but this time to his daughter, and his mismatched eyes never leave Wonder's face.

"But If you're here to pass the time, I would like to hear that story of the chestnut mare."

Levi

so scream you, out from behind the bitter ache.