Tiberios
It’s like seeing someone you think has been dead for a while. Odd, unexpected, and somewhat breathtaking. His name slips past her lips in that undeniable tone and despite the fact that he looks weathered compared to her, he feels the need to duck his head sheepishly. But he wont, he never could around her. He takes her in like a man dying of thirst, eyes wandering hungrily over her pewter body. If this was a test from the Gods, it was well designed. But she’s real, so real in fact that when she reaches out to touch his neck (his skin reacts, feeling the phantom sensation before she even completes the action) and pulls away, Tiberios can no longer deny her existence. He can feel the millions of question begin to pile up within him - How was she? How was her son? How was Tiphon? But she silences them with few words.
All this time and Talulah was still as dangerous to him as she’d always been.
“I’ve missed you too.” He says, finding it easy to release this built up tension. They had nothing to hide from one another anymore. There was nothing they could use to wound one another. In some ways, he feels as if he understands the silver mare more than he ever thought he did before. Life lived in a constant spiral gives him the opportunity to push aside all the restrictions he once had. “You look well.” He comments, finding it hard to fill this empty space between them. Her appearance had taken him off-guard, and he was fumbling to recover. He wanted her as badly as he always had, but thoughts of Khalis and Shatter loom like heavy curtains over his heart. He had made a promise to the Queen of the Falls, and he intended to keep it.
But, he cannot help who he is. A sideways smirk finds it’s way across his lips and he tilts his head gently to the side. There was something strange about her now, this unusual longing reflected in her eyes. For the first time he catches a glimpse of what she had seen in him all these years. A boy with a crush that had grown to wildfire - one she had never personally stoked, but she knew (she must know) that it had raged out of control for her. Now, she seems cathartically sad. “All this time and you still look as mesmerising as the first day I met you.” He knows why, of course. She and Tiphon would eternally look that way. “God I’ve missed you …”
Tiberios
Initiate of the Falls