would you spend your whole life with me,
At first, she is certain that he will pass her by. She has come to a stop where a creek narrows and then tumbles down a series of rocks into another shallower creek; it is inflated with the runoff from a springtime melt somewhere uphill, and the sound of the miniature waterfall is what has brought her near tears today. And he is a strange – she doesn’t recognize him even as a passing acquaintance – so the buckskin is sure he is simply on his way, with a purpose, to somewhere beyond her. But he isn’t. Green eyes are focused on her and she admits to being a little bit intimidated, if only to herself.
Nairne is of totally average height, 15.3 hands, but the unfamiliar stallion is much taller, and built much sturdier than she, who tends towards the slimmer side of things, thanks to her father’s bloodlines. And he has an intensity about him, the kind of intensity that she remembers of her family’s friend Brennen: the aura that something hidden lurks under skin and behind their eyes, and that they aren’t really someone who should be crossed. Even smiling, Brennen had always given Nairne that feeling, and she finds the purplish stranger much in the same vein.
But somehow, intimidating is not scary. Power, while respected, is not something she has been taught to fear, and there is something else about him that draws her, makes her smile at him even before he speaks. Open, friendly; the distraction from her own thoughts pushes much of the sadness to the back of her mind. He opens his mouth, and her name comes out. Nairne blinks in surprise, that much she cannot hide, but she doesn’t voice the obvious – and in her opinion, unnecessary – question: she doesn’t know him, she won’t pretend otherwise through acting as if she may have forgotten. However he learned her name, it wasn’t through a prior meeting.
He continues on to address her feelings, and she idly wonders if he’s a mind-reader. It doesn’t seem like the right fit, not for the power lurking under his skin, but it would explain a lot. The musing keeps the wave of sadness his words provoke from swamping her; instead the wave just laps at her hooves, tauntingly. Because like the tides, it often recedes, but it has not gone entirely. “Nothing I can do will bring the Falls back,” she answers him plainly, “I know that, in my head. But in my heart…feelings are often irrational. And I have nothing in my life to replace what I once had.” Without prompting, her family briefly flits across her mind but she does not hold the thoughts of them for long – she hasn’t been able to find the twins, and her parents are long gone from her life. Nairne has not yet reached the point of no return, of leaving Beqanna for good like they had. “Have you lost anything that once meant everything to you?” Her tone is not accusing, but walks the line between rhetorical and true curiosity.
He seems so balanced, so calm; the very things which tumultuous Nairne has never felt.
would you be there to always hold me down?
Nairne
mikhael x natilyn