Emotions war on the jaguar mare’s face when Talulah ask who she seeks. She can see the play of hesitation followed by determination before sliding once again into discomfort. It’s a vicious cycle that the metal mare can’t possibly understand, but she can be understanding at least. She knows what it’s like to battle one’s emotions. She knows how the heart can be pulled in two completely different directions. She’s loved (loved? the admission catches her off guard briefly) two men at the same time but in unequal fashion. Love can come in many forms, now she knows, but her heart wasn’t as quick to catch on.
Somehow, she sense that it isn’t love or the loss of it Tantalize is searching for. There’s a dark undertone in the way she carries herself, a resignation to learning the answer she seeks. It’s as if she’s waited years for this bad news and carried the added days up on her back. There’s a shame, too. What can the source possibly be? She takes a deep breath, and Talulah feels the name will come out on the exhale.
She isn’t wrong, but the moniker that stammers out surprises her.
Lion.
“Lion?” she repeats, stalling for time and trying to hide her own loss on her face. The man had been an anchor for her, a constant in a world that had taken everything from a girl whose life had just begun. He was always there, her golden sun that she had placed on high, a constant on her horizon. She had mourned his death like all the other deaths she has come to experience: by never forgetting any part of him. The sunset of his life had been just as difficult to witness as the rest (her mother and father) but she had been there beside him through it. Talulah thought she knew everything about the once-king. She knew the bad parts: the stubbornness, the occasional disappearances – but she certainly didn’t know them all.
“I’m so sorry, but he died. A long time ago, now.” Decades, she thinks, but is too preoccupied to really figure out the number of years. Her amber eyes watch Tantalize carefully, concern radiating in her gaze. If they were friends or lovers, this will be hard news, certainly – but something makes Talulah suspect it is not the case. She remembers the hesitance in the Amazon’s voice, the careful way she’d constructed her words. She wants to find him, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been a happy reunion if she did. The steel woman leaves out all the words she wants to spill of the golden pegasus, all the praise she would have otherwise heaped upon the man who had once watched over her. Something tells her to use caution, so she asks instead: “how did you know him, if you don’t mind my asking?”
t a l u l a h
metal woman of the dale