resurrect the saint within the wretch
Another join him, and the deep blue of Warden’s gaze slowly falls to her. The girl is touched by the stars and for a moment the horned stallion’s breath catches in his throat - he had cursed the stars and continues to do so, silently, beneath the open expanse of night time sky. It is strange to see them sprinkle so casually across the dark navy, peppered delicately along her skin. He snorts softly, his pale nostrils flaring, as if clearing his mind; the stars in her coat had taken him by surprise, but there is the gentlest of smiles offered to her on his pink mouth.
He had not come forward willingly; had he felt there was a choice, he is sure he would have denied it. He always had in the past and would continue to do so now - but something has shifted, changed. Perhaps it is hope that now alights within him instead of the darkness he knows so well - maybe that is the name of it, but he isn’t sure, for how is he to name something he has never felt?
Isilya addresses him and his ocean eyes fall back to her, stoicism along the hard planes of his white face. Her question brings a shadow across his expression as his brow furrows, the familiar terseness finding itself in his jawline. The heaviness of his wings that are folded gently at his sides now flutter absentmindedly, their down releasing the scent of smoke from the volcano and salt from the sea. Warden, the Watcher, is in silence for quite some time.
“I’m not sure I would change anything, Isilya,” he finally admits with a softening of his brow. The future always comes. Words that he lives by echo in his mind, a cautionary phrase to some, but perhaps words of peace to another. “I have seen beyond the present; nothing done here ever changes what will come.” Warden pauses briefly, feeling the weight of his words as they fall from his lips and knowing that they do not hold the hope and wistfulness of a possible king should. “But I believe knowing that - and understanding that - gives Tephra the greatest advantage of all.”
Warden bows his head slightly, the inky tendrils of his forelock falling across his forehead with the motion, part of it tangling in the midst of the deep blue of his twisting horns. “Would you change anything, Isilya?”
@[astra] @[Isilya]
