It seemed to be going well enough, for a moment. Perhaps this was the way women communicated, barely veiled barbs and offhand responses, smiles like a knife and laughs somewhere between a thorn and a rose. It was a strange way of making friends, but he could adapt, surely —

and then.

At first he’s caught off guard when she whirls, green eyes flicking to her face and his breath catching to see the anger written there brief as lightning. It smooths into a different sort of cloud and for a moment he continues, closing the short distance between them, even in the face of her expression. At first he only listens, head tilting in an unconscious quizzical gesture that turns to disbelief as she continues.

How quickly these girls turned - their conversations were dizzying, sharp zigzags from strange flirtations and purred words to threats. It’s more exhausting than walking this far into the desert had been, never mind the sweat that slicks his dark coat.

“Flower-picker? Is that what you call us?” This time it’s his turn to laugh, a rough, brief sound, and as he does he stops, feeling the warmth of the sand rise up around his pasterns. His green eyes are at first surprised and then turn hard as he takes in her expression, and his own ears flick back as he dips his snipped nose and the scythe of his golden horn catches the sunlight.

Her piece done, Bexley turns and continues on, but Charlemagne remains, ignoring the distant vultures in favor of the blonde mare. He’s caught between incredulity, confusion, and an anger that rises as fast and sure as hers had. An anger that pushes him into careless stupidity, calling after her back.

“Don’t insult you, in the same breath you insult me? A high tolerance for blood, perhaps, but clearly a low one for honest questions. I left my home because it was full of warriors just like you. Maybe I wasn’t as talented at fighting as the rest of them, but it wasn’t that that bothered me - it was the meanness. You’d fit in there.” It feels good to say the words, good to get the unspoken things out - the fears that had been circling him like rats since his first morning here, meeting the winged flower-girl. Even as he feels a horrible sense of deja vu (this situation is ending the same way Florentine’s had, and it feels like a free-fall) there is an awful satisfaction, to be done pretending. There was little doubt in his mind that she didn’t care what he had to say - might not even be listening - but he’d needed to say it, anyway.

“I’ll find my own way home,” he says - likely quite unnecessarily - and turns away, leaving parallel tracks peeling off from hers. “Girls,” he hisses, shaking his head, and tries not to think about the long path ahead of him (through the desert, with no tracks to follow, the forest he came from a haze on the horizon) as he leaves the golden girl behind with whatever lay ahead of her.

As for what might lay ahead of him, well…hopefully he’d live to regret today.


@Bexley