-Adria-
Only a friend? Adria thought, turning her head to feel the way Jakub’s lips planted a flower into the whorl of hair behind one ear. Again he surprises her with how deceptively gentle he could be, given all his changes. His mouth might’ve been twice the size but it knew how to be soft and it still remembered the shape of her forehead. She blinked up at him, golden eyes warmed by the gesture and now twice as entrancing with the added beauty of her hibiscus flower.
He was leaving, then.
Friends couldn’t stay and pick hibiscus flowers daily, just to light up her face.
She understood.
It was what you wanted - what you needed right now. Adria tells herself, even though the idea of Jakub leaving so soon after only just arriving tears at her feelings. “You may be part bull,” The Nereid shakes her tired head, finally leading them to thick weave of jungle trees. Molded together after hundreds of years living side-by-side, a ring of smooth-bark trees had intertwined its limbs together around a small, freshwater pool. At the base, the roots were so tight that a passerby couldn’t see through, and the trunks themselves prevented anything larger than a foal-sized creature from squeezing past.. “but you’re persistent as ever.”
Rather than letting it go, she turned to him and smiled. “Fine. Here is my question: what will you do when someone stronger than you comes along?” Would he keep going to the mountain and trying to change himself? Would he give up the things that made him who he was, just so that one day he might be the one deciding who to conquer and destroy? Would he ever be happy with himself? She doesn’t ask.
The little mare waited by the edge of the forbidden pool for the promised answer, watching how Jakub’s leathery black hide absorbed the light around him. He wanted a hint, and she wanted to see his true character.
Oh my love, don't forsake me; Take what the water gave me
@[Jakub]