it's our world they can never have it She had known what awaited her upon her capture, but she had not fretted -- it was not in her nature to tempt fate so. She had only silently strengthened her resolve, beneath the murky and deep waters of the Oasis, that should she be captured, it would be only after she had taken out as many guards as she could in the process. If she could drown Raum as well, that would be even better. Her muzzle comes to rest against Sera’s cheek, and the dragon hybrid closes her eyes, soaking in the comfort of contact when she is finally reassured that the Sera standing before her is real. Perhaps the worst aspect of her imprisonment is the skin-hunger growling deep in her bones, how isolated she has been even with the previous travelers that had stopped for a chat or to trade gossip with the curious-looking hippocampus. (She does not remember the ones who had jeered, or who had turned away in disgust. She had learned long ago to filter them out.) “Yes, Dovahkiin -- Dragon-born.” She pauses, pensive, sifting through the memories of her mother until she finds the word she’s looking for. “He is Dovahokaaz. My monah would tell me stories when I was young.” Valyrian had been neutral about the Dovahokaaz, had admitted she knew little of the dragons who resided beneath the ocean waves, and it had taken her more than a few moments to even remember how the word should roll from her tongue in the dragon-tongue. For a moment, she does not reply to the question about her crown, nor about her wings -- she is busy fighting back the pang of regret that sits deep within her chest, that draws aching from her ribcage whenever she thinks about all the lives she has lived in her years. She has gone from a daughter of war, to a naive wanderer, to an overwhelmed queen -- she has lost her crown, has watched two mates disappear, has discovered that she is still that wanderer from before but a little less naive now. The thought of Ker does not ache as much as it once did -- she is still certain, in the deepest corners of her heart, that her true queen will find her way back, “Myself and my first mate, yes. We ruled a place called the Iron Valley, in a land far from here where rosebushes grew like grass.” She sighs, soft as a whisper, and her gaze is shadowed when she looks up at the silver queen before her. She isn’t sure what hurts more -- the thought of her mate, gone into the wind without a trace, or perhaps the loss of her wings and her daughter to the desperation of a worried mother she had also called mate. It is perhaps cold of her to think, but their daughter had been sickly, and if she had not survived, they could have attempted again. Even so, there had been the potential for her to save her daughter without the interference of the sea-witch -- except that Daeva had stolen her daughter away on the first morning of her life, before she could have told her this, and it had been in the search for her daughter and her mate that her wings had melted away. She had been tumbling, free-falling down into the water of the Oasis, and there had been no wings to save her -- only strange fins and the realization that she was trapped. That, perhaps, hurt more than the midnight visit from the witch, where she had stood upon the shore and taunted her with all the things she had lost. She had learned that her daughter was alive, however, even if the witch had not answered her questions about her mate. Ker, at least, had the good sense to realize a sea witch was not the first answer to the question of a foal surviving, and sometimes she wonders if she had been with Daeva for love or because she had feared being lonely. She thinks she might know the answer, now that she is older and wiser than she was. “I was born with the wings of a dragon, yes.” She wonders if Sera will put the pieces together -- the strange eyes, the many sharp teeth, the way there is something feral about her even now, as she rests at the silver queen’s side -- and she wonders if it will change how the warrior will view her. “I was cursed into this… form,” Her nose wrinkles in disgust, casting a glance backwards towards the fins that rise from her back and crest -- nothing like the sharp spines that had once adorned her, and she had even lost the spikes along the sides of her face. She is still lost within this skin, even after so many months, and she thinks she will never entirely grow accustomed to it. She hopes she will not have to, and the thought of the witch’s blood in the water has her teeth bared in anticipation. “--but even in this form, I can serve Solterra’s weakest. I have yet the strength for that.” |
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