[private] Sing us a song and we'll sing it back to you

[Fyr]

I'll settle for the ghost of you.

Long ago beneath the light of a full moon, he had made a silent promise to always smile enough for the both of them. That is, if he could not make her smile at all. A feat he is relieved he still has a chance at achieving now that he has found her. His own twists uncertainly beneath the steadiness of her stare before it eases back into something smoother. Warmer. Tipping his dark muzzle in acknowledgment that he had heard, noting how similar the words were to what Aela had once instructed.

She searches the shadows for his strange friends and he knows she will not find them. He hesitates, the uncertainty spiraling along his spine openly. He cannot lie to her. “I’ve been… It’s been…” He snorts softly, frustrated with the sudden inability to put everything that had happened into succinct words. “It’s been.. A lot.” Is what he ends up on. Watching the orange cast of fire reflected in her depthless gaze and finding courage there. “I fell when the South fell. I woke up on the Isle and met an angel in Hyaline that reminded me of you. She healed me.” In more ways than one, he thinks. He leaves out what it was like to drown, that the soul that had stayed with him had been a terrible one.

“I've been looking for my mother. I met another Southerner, Lillibet. She took over Pangea and I live there now.” It is the short version, the highlight reel, that he settles on for now. In reality, he is bursting to know where she had been, what she had seen, what had happened in their time apart. But she had asked a question and he intends on answering it. “I don’t really talk to those friends right now.” He admits quietly, suddenly unable to meet her gaze. How can he explain to her, that reason of why? That he doesn’t want to see who might appear.

That he was afraid.

“What about you?” Eager to focus on her, his yellow gaze sweeping once more over this grown version of the girl he had known. Unable to stop looking at her in case this was a dream and she wasn’t real. “Liesma… Where are your stars?” A gentle question of concern and honest curiosity.

FYR

Photo by Little Willow Art

@liesma