build me up from bones, wrap me up in skin
hold me close enough to breathe me in
The ghost of a smile still haunts her lips when he comes.
The wind brings him – or seems to, anyway – ushering the dark horse on its equally dark-smelling breeze. She is used to it. They are all used to the exotic fragrance emanating from their sentinel volcano, spewing out and cascading down into the valley, down into their very pores. He is like the very essence of it, though, when he approaches her. He is like the molten mountain himself, shaking the earth with his steps and smelling like its core.
She doesn’t mind the reminder of what she has turned her back on.
Radiant grows her sweet smile in his company, circles back to face the ocean once more so that they look out across its frothy swells together. It is enough to disappear for a while in her mind, to sort and stack and admire her dreams like snowmen before barreling them down and facing reality. She is not made to be invisible forever, though. The reality is that she is largely alone, her parents having either retired on the shores of Elsewhere or taken off on an adventure without sorting out the family details first. Either idea is as likely as the other. Their daughter misses them terribly, but she is ready to fill the voids their absence causes. She is ready to step out a girl grown, a young woman in the making. She only wishes she knew where to begin.
“I’m – “
Before she can answer the volcano-man, a familiar voice pulls her attention away. He is bigger, broader - age has worked wonders on the gangly boy she once knew so that she hardly recognizes him now. But then, she would know that buoyant grin anywhere. “Foxy! I’ve missed you so much.” She says brightly, abandoning her previous stoicism in favor of her true self (a happy girl grown on rich, enduring love). She forgets, momentarily, that she is meant to be older, act older. Youthfulness relinquishes her brother’s nickname in the air before she can stifle it. Soon, she is as chagrined as Fox.
“Pardon. I’m Radiant. It is a pleasure to meet you, Offspring.” There, manners shown and outburst forgiven, she hoped. She also hopes she hasn’t embarrassed her brother too much as it seems the two know each other rather well. Fox showers them with snow, and the spray of it off the ocean makes her eyes fill with merriment and mist. Radiant nearly forgets her transgression. She dances easily in place, puts her face into the cool, briny wind and breathes in winter’s magic. Each flake that lands and melts on her rust-red skin spurs her onward in joy – and outward. Happiness becomes another cloak that she wears. But instead of shedding it, it seems to grow larger around her, snag on the other two as it expands. She laughs, the sound like frosted bells ringing across the waves. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
ooc: She is unknowingly using her happiness induction on both of them. Just ignore it if you don't want to be affected by it!