[private] I could take the whole world with me

[Tarian]

How does where he stand feel like the safest distance and yet like stopping beside a cliff's edge? For the first time in years (a decade?), he finds himself drawing near a woman who radiates to him like a flame. Tarian watches her, trying to decide between staying where he stands or leaping. When Altissima had been closer, the nearness of her had been a headier thing. His focus on her warmth, on how her blue sheen caught the moonlight just so had been immediate; there had been no thoughts of what they were doing, on what happens after this.

Perhaps he is putting too much on the future but from where he stands, Tarian can't see a compromise.

He is a warrior and she is a wanderer. To ask her to stay would make her a wanderer no more. And what would she ask of Tarian? (Nothing, some proud part of him thinks, because there is nothing that Altissima would want that she wouldn't take for herself.) Tarian is a warrior, Champion of Loess. Perhaps other fighters do not take their oaths so seriously but over the years as a soldier, Tarian has learned that this lifestyle is far more suited to those who don't have anyone to miss them. Because there could come a day that Tarian would step on a battlefield and not step off it.

And he has seen that grief before, of the loved ones who have to make all the steps after alone.

That's where his distracted thoughts go, until Altissima calls him back. The silver pegasus doesn't move towards her but lifts his gray head with his glowing to hide nothing on his face. There is a drop in the tone of her voice, like she tries to summon a breath of autumn or winter herself. Her expression changes and while there is very little of Tarian's chiseled face that could be considered soft, amusement makes him look far younger than his almost two decades. "Well," he replies, trying to take on a tone that is as dry as the desert where Altissima had been born. "Can you imagine what that would have done to my reputation?" Tarian banters back to her and decides that a step closer can't hurt.

It makes the conversation easier (or so he tells himself) when they aren't so far apart.

The next words come abruptly - an apology - and so Tarian stops abruptly. The warm water around his dark legs splash and he lifts his wings slightly, as in some imaginary defense. Despite how it sloshes around him, the Loessian's throat suddenly feels dry. Tarian - for all his wisecrack remarks and all his solitary silence - find both fail him at this moment. He simply has nothing to say, his voice flown far higher than he ever could.

When he finally finds it, the pegasus has to swallow (and it's like swallowing an unripe prickly pear) before he can speak: "You're... welcome." @[Altissima] is looking over him, perhaps at the full moon, perhaps at the stars, or just something that might shine brighter than him. He doesn't know what; because nothing glows brighter than Wildling from where he stands.