Wolf mother at the door- she don't smile anymore [Amet]

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

Her world perfect world had shattered. 
She hadn't yet found the strength to reassemble the pieces - she wasn't strong enough to pick up each fragment, examine and return it to its place. Someday she would be, but now is a long way from someday.
And for now, she is walking on broken glass.

He had broken her on a whim, and his cruelty shook her.

The spiral brand along her neck is a raised and pink, it too will heal, but six months is not enough time to erase such a brand as the dark god had placed on her.  Six months ago she had been taken to Carnage, played with, and cast aside. And from then until now she had only spoken to two others, one being her daughter, the other a chance encounter by the river. The encounter with the other branded woman had broken her down into tears, she had only managed to speak her name before the wave of emotions had taken control and caused her to crumble. 

But her dreams are a different story.  Her dreams were a sanctuary which she fled to too often, where she was her former and future self. But not all the dreams she saw were beautiful, some of them made the weight between her ribs even heavier to bear.

But for now, she doesn't think of her dreams, she aits where Hyaline meets the common lands under the shelter of ancient oak trees, with the river to her back. 
She waits for the telltale flash of scales. 

@[Amet]

[Amet]

if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes

The celestial filly directs him and Amet leaves without another word to her or to Corvus. His narrow body moves swiftly over the terrain of Hyaline, bright amber eyes searching the distance for Tangerine. Her daughter had said he could find her near the River,. the same place he had heard she was staying after she'd left his home. His bitterness is gone now, replaced with fear for the painted mare.

She had been gone six months. And now she couldn't even make it to Hyaline on her own.

It doesn't take the leather-plated stallion long to spot the river at the border of his territory, though he hears it first. It rumbles through the trees and over rocks, never ceasing... Amet moves along the soft bank, his amber eyes roving the topiary as he moves. There aren't many others nearby, and he wonders if he has gone too far - or not far enough?

"Tang?" he asks into the summer breeze, an unwelcome dread sitting heavy in his stomach. The feeling reminds him of the attack (the helplessness), and he suddenly wants to leave, to go back... He can't, though. He can't leave her here thinking that he'd refused to help her, that he didn't care. His first friend.

"Tang!" he calls again, with more confidence. He ventures further, the search now more frantic than before.

Amet

@[Tangerine]

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

 
Doubt begins to worm its way into her thoughts. 
It was possible he would never come - maybe she had made a larger misstep than she had originally believed. 

She had known she made a mistake, pushed him away when she should have pulled him close, but she was so tired that night. She had been anxious to see him, but it would have been wiser to wait. That night, after they parted ways, her pregnant body demanded rest after the long journey from Tephra and Tangerine had found a sheltered place under a trio of flowering cherry trees to sleep away her first night in Hyaline alone. In the morning she had fully intended to go and find him, apologize and have the conversation which should have followed his heartfelt questions. But fate had other plans.

The dark god had other plans. 
That morning the mental battle with him, which lasted for days, had begun. She lost in the end - found herself in his lair and bent the knee. But this is where her memories are scrambled. 
She grinds her teeth and stops her thoughts from wandering any further. 

She feels very alone as she waits for him, tucked away in the dense underbrush of late summer. But when she sees his golden form, it is not relief she feels as she had anticipated. She debates turning tail and running like the lowly forest creature she has become.
 He would figure out what she had to say eventually. That she was gone, that she didn't have the right to advise anyone when her own life was in shambles. She had become the queen of bad decisions and she didn't need to be rubbing off on him. 
The fallen woman.

But she misses the sunlight. She misses the mountaintops. 
So, she calls to him and puts the past behind her.

"Amet, over here." But her voice betrays her with its tremble,
"I had almost given up."

@[Amet] 

[Amet]

if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes

He can smell her scent, can sense that she is somewhere nearby, or had been recently. He stops his wandering, letting the sound of his hoof steps fall into silence so that the only sound he must try to hear over is the flowing water of the river. The sun offers little assistance in his search and Amet considers using his nihilism to reach into the forest, to see if there are any powers that he could potentially dampen... to see if Tang and her powers of premonition are still in the surrounding trees.

She calls to him before he can do so, and the gilded stallion swiftly pivots his body in her direction. Her voice trembles as he quells the distance between them quickly and he snorts at her statement, though his amber eyes are frantically searching her painted frame for injuries instead of meeting her eyes. "Given up?" his question comes out as a whisper when finally his gaze meets hers. "The warrior queen that I know would never do such a thing."

She is weak, damaged, not herself. He does not take offense to her statement, instead opting to believe that she would never give up on him.

"What happened, mahal?" he is barely able to ask, worried beyond belief that she will tell him she has just resurfaced from the Underneath, that maybe the same things that had tried to kill Ciri had tried to kill her... that Ciri could be in danger once again.

"Are you okay?" he whispers, not expecting her to say yes, but hoping that her wounds, whether internal or external, are ones that he will be capable of healing.

Amet

@[Tangerine]

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

 
Waves of insecurity beat against her conscious, wearing away the confidence and open-hearted bravery with which she had always faced the world. But as he comes towards her the tempest quells, somewhat, and she finds the courage to smile at his words. 

His eyes search her, but he does not physically close the gap, and for this she is glad. The last time a man touched her she had been left branded, and that ever-present thought causes her fleeting smile to fade. 

She didn't know how much to tell him, what to confess what to withhold. She doesn't trust her own voice, her meeting with Corvus flashes across her mind, but she dives in anyway. "You were right, to mistrust Carnage." She doesn't want to talk about it, to tell him about the lair and the branding - the sheer helplessness of being used like a toy. There is a hard lump in her throat and she doesn't want to see his face if she breaks down the way she had in front of the silver mare. So, she doesn't go on because words are her undoing. She simply shakes her head no and lets her eyes drift up the branches which shelter them. She didn't seek him out for pity, and it feels wrong to take any when others had suffered worse than she had. 

The gold and creme mare stands, mute as a deer, staring at the canopy, blinking away the tears which threatened to reveal the extent of her damage. Every night it felt like the whole world was sleeping around her and she was the only one awake, wide-eyed and sleepless, every night sound exaggerated until it became a monster.
He couldn't make her ok and she would never hold that against him. 

But she had to get better, she couldn't go on like this.
He wasn't the one she had almost given up on.

@[Amet]

[Amet]

if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes

Amet can't close the distance between them; even the thought of it feels wrong while she has Warrick and he has Ciri. He is not privy to proper etiquette or the line between consoling someone as a friend or consoling them as something more. And he could not live with himself, should he give her the incorrect idea or do something to hurt her navy-pointed companion or his starry-eyed girl. Amet is in the business of making others happy, best not to delve in the opposite direction. His amber gaze completes its inspection and he turns to look at her eyes now, which seem hollow and unfeeling.

His heart squeezes uncomfortably as she grants him with the only information he needs. Carnage. His anger flares again, but he is prepared for it this time, and the leather-plated stallion exhales slowly to keep from expressing it. Amet fears that he will push her away again, that she will not be able to handle his rage in her current state. And when she shakes her head, offering him a small no in response to his question when she can't even meet his gaze, the young King drops his head sadly.

"What do you need, Tang, to help you be okay?" he asks gingerly, hoping that he is not overstepping. He knows that he will not be able to fix it, that he cannot make it right (as much as he would like to), but he can try to help his first friend as much as be possibly can. He waits expectantly for her answer, worry and anxiety prevalent in his golden gaze.

Amet

@[Tangerine]

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

She feels the urg to reach out and touch him then, they they had danced together along the line of friends and something more for the entire existence of the relationship they had. 
Had.

She is already thinking of him as someone she used to know, it's the only way she can find the strength to speak her next sentence. Tang draws a deep breath over all her broken pieces and she finally meets his gaze. She was trying to put space between them, not fall into the warm comfort of what they had always been. "I've come to say goodbye."

The urge to bolt, to avoid the conflict as she had done before, burns fiercely in her breast. But she owes this to him, and more importantly to her future self - to let their goodbye have a beginning a middle and an end. 

One, two, three.
She counts her breath, trying to not focus on the words which have just left her. For all of her supernatural foresight, she had not seen this coming. She had dreamed they, together with his siblings, would build a sanctuary for the little souls of this world they shared. For the vagabonds (like she had been) and for those born of kings and queens (as he is).  

But then her children had been born, and her role had changed. Their paths had been forever shifted by Solace and Svedka and Tang did not regret it, but even he had caught on that it did cause her unrest now and then. But that was how the story had been written, and there was no changing it now. She had left Hyaline to give birth in Tephra and she hadn't known it was one of the laft times.

"I'm not an advisor, I'm not a diplomat," 
It's easy to list the things she isn't when she has no idea what she is anymore. "And I'm not your only friend anymore." The painted mare tries to resurrect some of their former rapport, for his benefit, but her heart is not behind it. She had played her part, and now the first act was over. Hyaline and was moving onto its next chapter, and the world he was building was already a very different place from where they had spent their adolescence. Her time as Advisor and companion were over. She had never been truly comfortable with the formal title he had placed on her without asking, and it is almost a relief to set it down - the title of his friend, that was a much more difficult thing to leave behind. 

"I'm thinking of going back, going home." And the way she says home, the word she has so rarely spoken, should let him know she doesn't mean Tephra.
 

[Amet]

if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes

Of all things for her to say, it's the one thing that he had been least expecting that finally falls from her lips. He should have known, though, when her eyes had failed to meet his. When she refused to give him the whole story. Amet, having been under the impression that she could tell him her whole truths just as he could do with her, stands awestruck and unwilling to believe the words that she has just slapped him with. What had happened? When had she decided that she could not, should not, tell him everything?

Anger, a common theme in their most recent conversations, flares again. He does his best to dampen it the way he can do with magical traits, but this time he can't stop the hardening of his eyes or the way his nostrils flare. "What?" he asks flatly, so much so that it nearly sounds like a statement. He has so many questions for her and he wants to blurt them all out at once. Mostly, though, he wants to know why, but before his mouth can connect to his mind, the painted mare is speaking again.

His ears twitch for just a moment before turning backwards, though they don't pin. Never. "I don't need you to be an advisor or diplomat, Tang," he blurts out, wanting to tell her that she could have just confided in him. Could have simply told him instead of leaving him to guess. Could have just been a friend, but he had wanted to show his appreciation for her and her friendship by giving her that title. He hadn't known that it would make her feel trapped.

Amet falls silent again, his amber eyes searching hers as she tries to revitalize a small semblance of their friendship. His gaze is no longer angry, instead flecked with sadness and when she reaches her last point he truly begins to realize the gravity of their conversation. He expels a sigh of disbelief, his brow furrowing in confusion and irritation. "Never mind that you're not my only friend anymore, Tang. You were still my first friend. And it was with your guidance and friendship that I mended my relationship with Iset, that I was able to bounce back after the attack on Hyaline, that..." he snorts in exasperation and takes a small stride backwards, his amber gaze hard and hurting.

"I thought my friendship was of value, too." His jaw tightens as tears, having developed swiftly in his hardened gaze, threaten to spill. "But now you have to say goodbye simply because you're thinking of going home? I would have walked you all the way there and walked myself all the way back here if you had asked."

He is silent for a beat. For two. "I know your wanderlust well. I just hope it will bring you back here one day, to tell me how you've spent your life."

Amet

@[Tangerine]

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

 
 "I can't sleep, I cant close my eyes without being back there in his lair, I can't think straight."

"He hurt me." He betrayed her and he tortured her, she wants to tell the golden stallion more, but she is afraid that every secret will bring her one step closer to walking back on her decision to leave. But as she starts speaking the words flow with sincerity, trying to make him understand. 

"We have switched places, haven't we? You came here a lost and hurting boy, and you've grown so beautifully into someone who knows himself and others take strength from you. You have so much to give, and I'm so happy I was able to be apart of that transformation. But now, I've just passed through the darkest part of my story and I need what you needed then, to leave to make a new life away from someone who has pushed me down and convinced me that I am less than what I am. It took me six months, but I now know he isn't right, and I know I can get better again, but I have to leave to do it."

The thought of returning to the plains of her childhood, outside of Beqanna, had been festering since the day she had spoken with Cordis. After Carnage, Tang had been struggling step out of the fog he had left her in- maybe it was wishful thinking, but she felt that the weeks of travel and seeing her brother and mother again would ground her, remind her of what she had lost and hopefully allow her the feel safe again.  It was a place where she had only known love. She was tired of traveling Beqanna alone from one side to the other. She wanted to travel with a herd, dance under the moonlight and never wake up in the same place twice - but she didn't want to do it alone. She wanted to go someplace where her sad story wouldn't cloud the eyes of her companions. 

"There are no dark gods hiding in the golden wheat of my home, there is only Alma, the mother, and her moon dances - her children."

Unlike their last meeting, this time his anger soothes her.  Her anxious heart had told her he would not care, he would be happy to see her go, and their parting would be brief. But she is still relieved when it passes and as he takes a step back and she steps forward, unwilling to let the reunion end before making things right. 

"I'll be back someday, I promise." And she smiles genuinely for the first time since Carnage called her name. "Remeber, I know things? And I know I'll be back, I just need some space from Beqanna for a while. But I want to leave knowing we are still friends." She had known him long enough to see the questions welling up in his eyes. "Ask me anything, I will answer as best I can."

@[Amet]

[Amet]

if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes

The thought of Carnage has begun to make Amet feel sick ─ his stomach twists uncomfortably and a dull, constant sadness sweeps over him. The young King searches her face, looking for the upbeat Tang he had met years ago. The Tang that had somehow made friends of him and Warrick. But this is not that Tangerine. There is a part of her that has been broken and this realization removes all anger from the leather-plated stallion. She needs to be fixed, but only by time, and while he comes to terms with this epiphany, Amet is not pleased with it.

She drops her vague statements and sugar-coated explanations then, finally explaining to Amet how she had felt, and what she knew she needed. He can only imagine what the Dark God had done to her ─ he had, after all, heard Ciri's horrifying story of the Underneath, and he is not naive to think that it could not happen again.

This explanation is something he can get behind. It's something that he understands. His heart aches for the painted mare and he nods to her with a small, sad smile. "Okay," he says softly, fully accepting her need to travel away from Beqanna, remembering the urgency he'd felt when he had known it was time to steal away from Shalla and the Dunes.

Tang moves with him when he retreats, a small action that Amet notices but does not mention. Before Ciri, he would have closed that distance between them to inhale her scent one more time. He would have told her how he had felt. Now, though, the young King's mind has been consumed by the starry-eyed girl. He feels no sadness over whatever opportunity he may have missed with Tangerine, there is only sadness that his life will be devoid of her friendship.

"Of course we are still friends," he says softly before a sigh falls from his lips. Her offer coaxes a small chuckle from the dragon King and he takes a step forward to nudge her neck gently. "I will ask my questions when you return, mahal. When do you leave?"

Amet

@[Tangerine]