A formidable figure Solace knows well appears in the distance, and she is as surprised as he may assume. "Castile." She replies warmly as he speaks her name, reaching forward to brush her muzzle to his briefly if he will have it. "What a pleasant surprise."
A moment of reflection briefly clouds the orange and silver of his mismatched eyes. But she can only guess which memory her presences causes his mind to conjure, for they both seem content to let it remain unspoken. The words he had confessed to her during their last private meeting had never really left her. When you had run from Kagerus after your fist fight, she thinks with a hint of shame. Vulnerable and hurting, she had found him in the meadow.
Those words clung to the edges of her mind whenever thoughts of him surfaced - and she had long wondered if they still applied - even if they no longer made love in the secret meadows between their kingdoms.
'I think you underestimate how much I care for you, and always will.' He had told her, and she tries not to remember the press his lips to the curve of her jaw. 'No matter what.'
Maybe it is the last trace of her girlhood naivety she has unwittingly carried into her adult life, but she trusts him. She is loyal, and always has been, and the knots of her past do not fall loose - they can only be severed. She no longer aches for the touch of his lips to her skin as she had in bygone years, but it does not mean she no longer cares for him. Their history is as weighted as it is long, and there is so much that doesn't have to be said between them.
But Today, he is charming and casual and she mirrors him, not having to crack the marble facade because she had never put it on once she realized she wasn't stepping into a war zone. "Your humble abode," she muses, letting her cerulean gaze leave him to survey what he has claimed - or been handed - it doesn't really matter how he secured the hills for a second time. "I never thought Icicle Isle suited you anyway," she adds, still unaware of his endeavors in other lands.
"I've flown quickly this morning, maybe you could show me to one of Loess famed hot springs while we talk." She makes a move to step forward, not heading for the heart of his kingdom but rather a dip in the land further along the Hyalineian border where the varied plant life is dense and colorful.
"I'm sure you can guess why I've come," she begins, "but now that I have you to myself for a moment I have a few... non-political questions for you too. Valdis came to me a few weeks ago, afraid of certain changes she was experiencing, and I wanted to see if you had ever experienced anything like she described to me."
"So, you decide. Family matters or business first?"
we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
@[Castile]
