[private] When did the colors fill in the spaces where there were none?

[Fyr]

I'll settle for the ghost of you.

Heat had never been his adversary and he’s found that he’s adapted to Pangea’s climate with surprising ease (although the young jaguar stallion still has his own misgivings on what living here actually means). Being a fire-wielder had its advantages and he’s not as susceptible to the climbing temperatures like most others would be. The unrelenting summer is a welcome reprieve to the hell on earth he had found on the Isle, even with the assistance of flames he had constantly felt frozen to the bone. Pangea was in every way an improvement compared to that and despite the cold nights here, they are much more bearable compared to where he’s been.

Her absence’s during the day haven’t been noted much by him (being gone much himself during daylight) but what drives them from the desolate canyon during waking hours are very different motives. He is a dog with a bone, unable to give it up so easily, and although he had yet to visit that stretch of land left of Loess and see the drowned South for himself… There is a strange feeling of being close to something. As if any second he would discover the clue to solve the case, one way or another. He feels it's in the Ruins but every time he gets close enough to snatch whatever it is, it always disappears at the last moment. Like having something on the tip of your tongue and being just a fraction away from knowing it.

It hadn't gone over his head how she has taken to ruling like a duck to water. Yes, the land was pretty empty and apparently there were only three of them calling it home for the moment. And yet she moves through the barren lands with an easy grace and a way about her that gives no doubt in his mind who this desert belongs to. As if she had been born for it, despite her misgivings on the weather. The same breeze that tousles her lilac strands begins to coil into his own long fiery threads. They catch in the current and curl gently against his broad spotted neck which arches slightly as she murmurs his name in greeting, sending fresh flames to light along his back.

Feral eyes glance away from her, inwardly cursing himself for this nervous tic he’s seemed to carry around since he was a child. He doesn’t stew on it long, the sharpness in the back of his head chasing out whatever lingering embarrassment that’s left and his wince it seems is noticeable enough for the perceptive likes of her. For a moment, he battles with himself on what to tell her. She knew well enough about his fire magician ways but when it came to his connection to the otherworld, he had kept his lips tightly sealed. A small part of him worried that she would press him to use his connection in the same way he had thought of using himself many times. In that way that he knew he wasn’t ready to do yet.

There was also that memory that curled around his brain, remembering her playful challenge. ”I think I want to play with Fear.” One that he still wished to hold her to in a strange dark way. So he settles on something in the middle, something true without the whole truth. “The Ruins.” He says with a slight shrug of his dappled shoulder. “There’s something about the place that’s… strange.” He finally says, looking back at her with that peculiar flickering in those bright yellow eyes.

Shaking his pale skull, as if it might dislodge the pain and pressure building there, he casts her with one of his faint smiles. “Nothing for you to worry about, Lilybee.” He says, a flicker of amusement playing across the shadows of his face, quite warming up to the nickname he had given her. 

FYR

Photo by Little Willow Art
@Lillibet