[private] i feel a bad moon rising | aten

[Lepis]

the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been Lepis pauses in her turn, looks back over her shoulder as the champagne stallion speaks of what he understands, of the danger that he sees. Her golden face creases into a frown, the myriad of dun lines on her forehead wrinkling even deeper. The danger he sees is Castile wanting more land? Truly? “Aten,” she says, and her voice is quiet, very quiet, just loud enough to be heard over the low whisper of the springtime wind. “Listen to me. Really listen, please, and don’t talk.” She turns as she speaks, until she faces him again. Her breathing is metered, her blue-eyes still once they settle on his brown gaze. “There was no ’both ways’. When I spoke to Heartfire, it was to tell her exactly what I told you before I left. I asked for the position of kingdom in the North, and barring that, for our freedom from her rule.” The Comtesse pauses, eyebrows raised slightly, searching his gaze for a sign of recognition of this subject that they had spoken of in depth. Aten had not approved of it, but Lepis had not cared. It was what she was going to do, regardless of who might stop her. “Her response was to threaten me with destruction, and later to visit Castile.” The way her mouth twists around the word visit makes it clearly sour; she considers the visit to have been as much a threat as the promise of destruction Heartfire had for Lepis herself. “Heartfire is the only danger we face, Heartfire and her determination to keep Taiga under her thumb and her crown on her head.” “As for Castile…” Here she trails off, her gaze drifting south, as though she might see the Loessian hills through the fog and trees of Taiga. “I dare say I know the man who raised me, and know him rather well. There is a reason I want to ally Taiga with him; he did not ‘move in’ on us. This is what I wanted.” Or at least, she had thought that it was. She is no longer so sure, but there are some plans that – once set in motion – are all but impossible to stop. lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of pteron, marni, tiercal, eyas, gale, celina, and elio

haha it didn't go the way Lepis thought it would either! i honestly have no plan and am just going by what happens IC. she's not necessarily even mad at Aten either, so i think they could deff be friends in the future!