rhonen
molten eyes and a smile made for war
The world seems to be too still, not moving, at least for him. The filly at his side shifts, wants to step forward, but she seems to sense even at this very young age that now isn’t the time to pull away from her sire. She is his anchor in this moment, a solid weight against his side that keeps him moored to the here and now. So she simply gives the mare a shy little smile, extending her neck and nose without moving her feet. “Hello,” her eyes drift to the mare’s wings, curiosity sparking in their depths, but she just listens to the stranger speaking about her father.
Leliana is the first mare, in fact the first anyone, who Rhonen has greeted by name. Noah wants deeply to know what it is about her that is so special. But the mare’s face is back on Rhonen’s, her next question for him, and the filly merely flicks an ear towards her sire to listen. Rhonen holds himself stiffly after the question, but minute movements of muscle under his skin say he’s considering it carefully. “Sometimes I have been well,” the boy says gruffly, and he thinks back to their last meeting. They’d discussed deep things, the philosophy of feelings.
His mind drifts first to Karaugh, to the complete lack of true feelings between them, and to the hurt and fury he’d felt when he learned that she’d borne a child – his child! – and never bothered to tell him. But distance, and perhaps thinking about their long-ago conversation, let him see it from her point of view. Why would she have though Rhonen, with their brief and emotionless affair, would have cared to meet the child? She was wrong, but he could understand it.
There were bright moments with Atrani, in between, but the next part of Rhonen’s life was Nihlus. When his mind goes there, he stiffens again, turning his face away from them, but under his skin Leliana’s careful ministrations are chipping away at his stress, chinking away at the fortress walls. Momentarily, he forgets that Noah is beside him; he lifts his face back to Leliana and he could drown in her eyes, in the memories of that night and the soothing feeling she emanates now. “I fell in love,” he says quietly, as if from far away, “but he didn’t love me back.” There they are – the sharp words, knife edges dripping his own blood where he’s cut the wounds open again.
But the conversation drifts across his mind again - ‘If I did not intend to hurt someone, does it matter if they were hurt?’ He’d answered her - ‘We can only act on what we know’ and ‘Everyone must be responsible for their own feelings’. Even in this, she is healing him. It is not anyone’s fault that Nihlus had loved another. Heartbeat by heartbeat, things inside him knit together and on the outside, he relaxes. The filly can feel it, and she glances from him to her in wonder, for it usually takes days for him to relax. “But I have Noah, now, and that is good.” They aren’t gentle words – so few of his are – but they’re almost normal.
She finally gets up the nerve and sidles away from him, coming close to the mare and watching her still, so intently, through her bright eyes. “Are you magic?” she asks the mare, voice little more than a whisper.
