thick skin / elastic heart

[Camelia]

I will run the streets and hostile lands, I will touch the rain with all I have
I will breathe the air, to scream it loud. My feet will never touch the ground.

They walk slowly. Camelia isn’t trying to match the young mare’s steps, but with her own limping gait they both inch toward the sea. She gives her name (“Thoruun,” spoken on scabbed and sore lips) and another bright smile dances across the dunskin’s mouth. “Thoruun. It is a pleasure to meet you.” She is honest. There isn’t a thing Camelia would want more in the world than to meet someone new and assist them in their struggles. She’d even offer to be the extra support in Thoruun’s step if it weren’t for her own uncomfortable leg injury.

They reach the sea in good time, however. Camelia dips her toes in, feeling the rush of cool salty water send a tingle against her leg hairs. There is another presence – one she has felt before – that ends the aging mare’s contentment. She turns, spotting Eight approaching and asking a question that sounds like a gunshot being slung from his mouth. Her warm eyes darken with faint thunderclouds. She’s only come across Eight once before, and he had been just as rude and harsh then as he is now.

Yet, he is the sire of her grandchildren. Camelia dips her head toward him in greeting, but doesn’t say anything otherwise. Thoruun’s answer sends a shiver down her spine. To not know who inflicted harm on you; it is a sickening, depressing thing. The aging mare steps closer to the younger, her brown eyes deep with compassion and worry. She glances between Thoruun and Eight. Judging by their expressions and their way of speaking to each other, she presumes they know one another.

“Should I, ah, leave?” She is hesitant to do so – she doesn’t want to leave Thoruun here with Eight seeming so wrathful. Yet she does not wish to intrude on their reunion or whatever this is. Camelia shifts her weight uneasily, wincing again as her healing leg aches with pain.

Camelia