HYDRA WAS OBLVIOUS to the years that Kauri had seen and the worlds that he must have walked. She was naïve despite her willingness to admit it. The two years she had spent in this existence seemed to yawn behind her in the way that only the young experience time. They manage to catch themselves in the mirage that time is quicksand, only to wake up one day with milky eyes and stiff limbs and wonder when it had loosened them from its snare.

The dun filly listened intently to Kauri, drinking in his words like a cup that never became full. She painted a desolate land in her mind as he spoke. It was made monochromatic by a beige blanket of desert sand where weathered trees that had long forgotten how to grow leaves stood as skeletal sentinels, though whatever they watched over had long since turned to dust.

Curse to my blessing? She mulled this over, her expression unchanged while her mind chewed on the curious comment. After a moment, she tucked her nosiness into the folds of her sleepy mind and decided she would pry no more. She had asked him to hold a candle to the shadows of his past enough tonight, and he had been generous in sating her interest with cherry-picked details.

“Indeed it does,” she replied quietly, letting her gaze fall trancelike to the creek rushing steadily beside them. They were bathed in the soothing steadiness of the bubbling creek as she digested what the stallion had spoken about deities and a divine intermingling of all things. Her attention returned to Kauri as he lay down, and only now did the weight of the night sky begin to feel like a comforting weight upon her shoulders. 

Her eyelids drooped and she circled once, twice, before settling in the cool autumn grass along the bank near the stallion so haunted by his past. Hydra did not fear his phantoms enveloping her dreams and rotting them into nightmares. She drew solace from the slim possibility that maybe - just maybe - her company might keep his wolves at bay if even for a night. It was all she could offer, for she knew her words would roll off of their inky pelts and fall flat at their feet.

The dew had already formed, beading each blade with an intricate array of delicate jewels, and for a moment she wondered what they would look like as snowflakes. The crisp autumn air calmed her worries and the whirring cogs of her mind.

“I hope you don’t mind some company…,” she murmured into the soft, damp pillow beneath her chin. Her deep brown eyes fell closed as she inhaled, and in that moment between sleep and consciousness, she smelled the lavender her mother had placed beneath her bed each night. Does she still...?

She was asleep before she could finish her sentence, the thought an interlude to a dream of sea spray and rocks that sounded like rain as the waves ebbed and flowed against the shore.

@Kauri Hope you don’t mind her drifting off – she’s feeling sleepy, liker her writer XD Figured we could wrap it up and possibly RP in the Night Court!