The Academy: Casually mistaken; Hypatia.

He shrugs casually, the dip in his shoulder unremarkable as he gazes at the ivory delight that Hypatia is, slender body now gifted with the grace of being an Oracle. The Naphtha, they call her. Durden doesn’t even know what that means. It seems that he’s taken a long time to respond, to answer the call of the Element, but maybe it’s now that he’s finally beginning to see, whatever that means, and his muzzle extends briefly to brush Hypatia’s cheek, lips parting briefly to install a kiss on that crystalline, flat part of the face.

Durden’s voice is abnormally quiet, struck in the matters of destruction and construction that have recently stumbled upon him, the troubles brewing in his mind like a thousand daggers, but he knows that Hypatia Knows, and it’s in this that he finds very little solace when he speaks. “I feel the elements themselves, but other than that,” he says softly, “I feel nothing.” His mahogany eyes reach Hypatia’s, his silken forelock falling between his eyes like the weight of a feather, and he, Durden, stuck between a web of nothingness, wonders for a moment why it even matters.

“But,” he continues, “I can call it home here now.” Durden’s lips curve into a characteristic smile, bypassing all of the normalcy that trespasses in the night, and then he continues speaking, the lilt in his voice slightly higher than it was before. It doesn’t change the fact that he misses the emerald hills. “It’s home because it’s no different than before.” And he revels in that fact, never having spoken it before, and it was like blasphemy fell from his lips as he silences immediately.

The Air breathes in him, climbing his legs and setting the wings inside his chest aflutter, and momentarily, they rise on the breeze and linger in the self-conjured breeze that Durden produces, however abnormally, and then the brown-flecked silver stallion inches closer to Hypatia’s body. The surge of power that emanates from her is comfort enough in a place where he is weaker, where he is vulnerable -- and maybe, just maybe, Hypatia isn’t lying to him after all.

Wordlessly, his mind whispers to her, although he knows he cannot get a response yet, can I trust you? And he knows that he can.