The chuckle that escapes her is light-hearted. It contrasts with the fire in her eyes and the ice that frequently coats her voice. ”I fooled you then,” she admits as she turns to look at him after they’ve already made their descent to the shore. Oftentimes she forgets the immortality that has preserved her youth, forgetting how many years have actually passed since she was but a foal scrambling around in the Jungle. The memories still play back in a focus so clear that it’s like it happened yesterday. She can still hear the low growls of the jaguars and the singing of the birds high in the canopy. Her trails had often been littered with vines and flowers of every color. It was beautiful there, and it was home. She had family and a sense of sisterhood that still remains unmatched. ”Twenty years,” she says while in a trance state of memory, ”I’m twenty.” To admit it is almost a folly. She should have let him believe her young, but she couldn’t lie, either.
”What they find most surprising is that I’m twenty without a child and without even having been touched by a stallion,” she doesn’t tell him this for his pity or for him to pull her into his side. She tells him for the moment of openness and vulnerability that she has eluded time and time again. Her thoughts, her stories, her everything has always been locked behind a cage that no force could ever penetrate. Her entire life has been spent alone while avoiding vulnerabilities and closeness with others. Her mind was protected and so she battled hard to protect her body as well.
An amused lift of her brow addresses him as she contemplates the victory that led her to the throne. She could agree with him and pat herself on the shoulder and coddle her ego, but instead, she is quiet and soaks in the whiskey tones of his voice as though they were the lullaby of the sea. The easiness of his nature settles across her in waves, chiseling away at the ice and stone that has so often shielded and protected her. She isn’t tense, she isn’t fighting, she isn’t brimming with anger; she simply is.
A gentle sea breeze tousles her forelock as she regards the smooth laughter that swells from his core. ”Hmmm…” she actually considers him more carefully as her eyes rove across his battle scars. ”I’m assuming you were – are – a soldier. So, in the old Beqanna, before all of this, where did you find to be most like a home; not all the places you lived, but the one place that forever holds your heart. And the one you would always fight with your soul for?”
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