TORIELLE
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
New friends.
The simple statement, almost a query in the way that it was spoken, so softly and with a near childlike wonder, filled Torielle with a brightness. It had been so long since she had called someone a friend. There had been Lorelei, the only steadfast companion she’d known in many years. The one constant in her life before she had been brought to this new land, void of all knowledge and alone. Though she had been within the Sage’s temple for a majority of her adult life, she had never once considered them to be her companions, or many of the other students to be her friends. They had all been lacking in depth, though she’d not been able to pin down what exactly it was they were missing while she had been there. It was now, as she stood before Veil that she began to put those pieces together.
The many souls that she had surrounded herself with all had a desire for knowledge to be sure, but none of them burned with true passion and curiosity for its own sake. They held steadfast to purpose. Which, all things considered, was not necessarily a bad thing, so long as it left room for other things to breathe, to grow. But the studious equines that devoted themselves to research under the Sages’ watchful gaze did no such thing. They rarely indulged in knowledge for the simple pleasure of it. Pleasure was, indeed, quite frowned upon. It was something that she was sure had been sapped from those around her by some foreign means. She could not begin to fathom what had caused it, or if they had simply been born with this void within themselves. Yet, here with Veil, she could see that same yearning. To explore things for their own sake, because it interested her to do so, because it pleased her to do so.
Perhaps Torielle had been putting off developing new connections within this land because she had thought that to do so would mean giving up on the connections that she had within her home. Maybe there had been a secret worry that those of Novus had that same lack of passion, thirst for knowledge, the warmth that had kept Tori’s spirit alive in the vast darkness of the nebula as she walked between worlds. Her first handful of encounters did as much as confirm it. She felt the scar hidden just under her hair and veil at the shoulder tingle with the thought. Novus had been a strange and dangerous place when she first arrived, and it had nearly killed her. She had retreated, fear preventing her from reaching out again.
And in spite of this, she had met Aeon, a young mind who was in need of guidance, of a big sister, or a mother, or an auntie. A colt who didn’t know how special he really was, and unafraid of the world and with a great courage to explore everything it had to offer. It was as if the frost that had begun to creep its way into her heart had started to melt away. It had left her soft and open for her to meet Veil.
The mare smiled warmly, and if her expression could have been the sun it might have blinded them both. The star woman then did the unexpected. Her muzzle brushed Torielle’s shoulder, murmuring an affirmative. She, too, wanted to be less alone. The touch shot electricity through the dappled skin of the antlered woman. It was only a moment, but it left a tingle that danced across her coat and made its way to the strings of her heart, playing a joyous tune.
“Yes, Veil,” the mare spoke after a heartbeat. “Let’s be friends.” Torielle wondered briefly if her cheeks would begin to ache from the smile plastered across her face. She let out a bright laugh, needing to release the joy that had begun to build inside of her, lest she potentially combust on the spot.
“Would you like to accompany me to the library?”
art by the-day-of-shadow character by scapeh table by sunny
