Levi had used the winter to learn. He had never stopped moving, a dark shadow roving the lush tropical landscape without urgency. He was learning every dip and rise in the land - discovering hiding places, freshwater, and venomous serpents. He needed to know the land if this was now his home. He would learn every inch of Tephra first, the residents later. Thepra, the soil and stones, would be here long after every soul had wander to other worlds.
Except for his, he intended to stay.
His father had given him many gifts, time would tell if immortality was one of them.
Levi had found her during his wandering, saw a glimpse of her dark coat so like his, but he had not approached her. He was not ready. A day had passed, he had felt no need to rush their reunion; he had taken time to think about the tightness in his chest the sight of her had caused him. But his reflection had not been as productive as he had hoped.
So finally, he sought her out.
His large frame was not made for moving stealthily, the ferns and young trees around him part unwillingly as he tears a new path across this outer island. His heavy hooves sink into the softness of the white sand as he pushes aside the last young palm marking the border between beach and jungle.
Her gentle ghostly eyes strike him.
But he does not falter in his approach, he has come too far to turn back now. Like the child he no longer is he falls into her embrace. Did she know? Would she be angry? He couldn't remember seeing her truly angry before he had left home, but he couldn’t remember her keeping out of sight, alone, on outer islands either. Why was she not with father? She places herself below his chin and the thoughts he has tumbled in his mind for the last day surface at her motherly touch. She was too good for them all.
He had an idea, but he didn't want it to be true. He had just come back, he had just come home.
“Do you still hate this?” She says with the softness in her voice her remembered better than the lines of her face. He thinks for a moment… “Not so much now.” His voice was rough for one so young, weeks of disuse and years of smoke had flavored his words with caramel. Her nearness put their size difference in sharp relief - there is a fragility to her he had never noticed before and he feels concern prickling along his spine underneath his curiosity.
There is a small tugging on his mind, and it reminds him of someone and the way she had touched his thoughts and altered his vision. But this touch is less intentional, it would be barely noticeable if he had not felt a similar sensation before.
Rapture.
But she had stirred feelings in him he wasn’t ready to discuss, especially not with his dam, so he thinks on her no more.
Isle places a kiss between his mismatched eyes, and he holds steady just long enough for her to complete the gesture before pulling away and looking out over the ocean.
“How are you, love?” Again, he pauses. The awkwardness he feels with so many others he does not feel with his mother, but he takes the question literally as he too often does. He searches for an answer when a "good, good." would do. He didn't have name for the feelings he felt. Looking back, his wild confused eyes finds hers... had she always been so fragile? He is afraid the wrong words could shatter her, one of the very few he truly cares about.
"Well, I'm home now... "
What happened back then doesn't matter now.
.
Levi
so scream you, out from behind the bitter ache.
@[isle] pick and choose whatever you want to flow from his mind to hers! He isn't really trying to hide anything.