At her insistence of formalities, he merely smiles and dips his head. He supposed that she had her reasons for falling back on such habits; perhaps she found comfort in their familiarity, even when they were not necessary. He wasn’t sure her reason, but he was certain she had them and so he did not push her on the topic. Instead, he glossed over it and gave her a roguish grin. “It is, isn’t it?” He tilted his chin back so that he could take it all in, letting the sight of it wash over him. “I’m still not quite used to its beauty.”
He still remembered the first time that he had seen it, the exhaustion that had settled into his bones as he had trekked back into Tephra after he had climbed the mountain alongside Offspring to petition for it. He had been tired to his bones, but that fatigue had been softened by the triumph of knowing he could lead his people here, carve out a home for them in the instability that had racked all of Beqanna.
The first thing he had seen had been the volcano. The alienness of it, the power and grace.
Drawing himself back to the present, he focused on her, chuckling at her answer and rolling his shoulders. It was nothing more than he expected from the enigmatic mare. “Indeed,” he replied, the corner of his mouth twitching with amusement. It had been a while since someone had so stubbornly withheld information in conversation; thankfully, he found it more entertaining than frustrating.
“Do you have any questions for me?” he finally asked, letting go any notion of getting a straight answer out of her for the moment. Perhaps, he thought, she would prefer to be the one inquiring instead.
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
![[Image: gqYjsHr.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/KjqNDKxc/gqYjsHr.png)