Who would Tarian love, if he had?
It shimmers before him. Standing in the belly of the undergrowth is someone and the winged stallion thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him. The silhouette had been smaller, hadn't it? He had been so sure that moments before a boy had been there. Not old enough for broad shoulders. Not enough time to grow into his frame yet. He could have sworn that his vision had alluded to a boy, not to her.
And yet when he catches a glimpse of her, it catches in his throat (like it always had).
Tarian's restraint has always been a (one of many) point of pride with him. But all it takes is the shift before him when the colt becomes something he isn't and suddenly, the almost-white pegasus becomes a boy himself again. He returns to his youth when a girl who wouldn't love him brought forth a volcano in his chest: something that simmered and smoldered until the unhappiness eventually erupted.
The lights play across the angles of her face and something is wrong. The stallion takes a powerful stride forward - taking full accountability of the ground that he walks on - and then stops because he looks up. Even though they stand beneath the covering of a forest, there are no stars. When his blue eyes flash upon the shape that changes - that alters when the realization comes that this could not be (not) his Orani who danced and dreamed beneath starlight - he accuses the specter.
Tarian has never had a claim to Orani but neither does this stranger. That he has borrowed her somehow, that he has taken her and crafted her into something else infuriates him. "What are you?" he asks with a voice that deepens with accusation. Tarian speaks what he knows as the edges of his dark lips curl into a sneer with the truth. "You are not her."
Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.
@[isakov]