It's funny how truly temporary titles are, especially when you have eternity to achieve them all. Tiphon has been a low-ranked soldier and diplomat just as he has been a King. He has risen and fallen in both kingdoms and life itself. When immortality shields you from age everything seems to lose its urgency. He isn't in a race to be granted respect and power; it can come and go as it pleases. It's just another day, just another blink of his eyes.
Unfortunately, Tiphon has never experienced that mortal urgency. He knew what he was the second he and Candle exited the womb. He knew then what difference his life had than most. As a child, however, he thought it a blessing. Now, he sees it for what it truly is: a curse. As the years flutter by Tiphon will watch his loved ones wither and die. Months (or has it been years already?) ago he saw his own son's body maimed on the beach. He realized then how treasured family should be because their mortality leaves them wondering when it will happen instead of if.
As his thoughts begin to consume him, clouding over his consciousness, she comes as a beacon. She is the light tower guiding him out of the fog by the gentleness of her voice. Tiphon blinks slowly then turns his head to look at her. Malka, she says her name is, and he wonders briefly if they had met decades ago in a Jungle miles away from here. Most horses he met during his reign in the Dale, but that was already so long ago. No one could possibly still be around from then, and so the idea is dismissed with a smooth incline of his head. "Tiphon," like her, he bears no titles or honors. It's merely his name with nothing else attached. At times, he takes into consideration if that is a good or bad thing. Nothing ties him down. Nothing controls him.
A deep sigh is exhaled as he briefly turns his attention back onto the meadow that unravels in front of the two of them. "If I had to take a guess, I would think you've been around quite a bit and have had a part in quite a few rodeos." A low, airy chuckle tumbles from deep in his throat, like boulders in a landslide. His forelock hangs down toward his muzzle, but it's offset enough to show his molten eyes when they lift to find her own. "You haven't always been a wanderer," not by the way she talks or the way she carries herself. No, she has held her temporary titles just as he had many moons ago.
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