Desreal: to rowan;

Yet some grow up, and never choose.

Some do not believe in sides, or glory, or greatness; need not cling to youth and freedom because it follows them, inexplicably, accompanies every step, through grayed hairs and lost (or never gained) friendships. It strolls beside through the many silent nights, a comforting friend in the stark solitude and loneliness that it itself fashions with deft hands and a cruel twist of the lips. This suits some just fine; others who cannot handle it forfeit freedom for herdlife and friends, for love, pretending they are just as free as before, but knowing as they cast a fond eye to the woods, that they are enslaved by their very emotions. Then there are some, like Aglaeca, who hover painfully in the middle, in the purgatory or no man’s land. Who longs for company as if it were food; and is repelled from it as if it were poison.

He cannot go to them, of course. His temper and violence disallows this – they might welcome him at first but sooner or later they’d want no business with him. (If he’d spent more time watching he’d observe how they embrace those with Shards and those bitten; embrace killers like nothing has been done; and he might begin to doubt his understanding of herds).

He slides through the trees, the setting sun at his back, no more than a silhouette or shadow, but this is nothing new to him. He feels the part, and looks the part. Wild, untamed, so your name says Aglaeca. As much as he longs for herd life, it is there in his stern hazel eye that he would not fit; in the way he tilts his head, listening, like a predator, or maybe even prey – once described as a stag of the woods, alone, feral. If that description had been spoken aloud he would have liked it, and believed it. Except that he was not so graceful. Too big, cumbersome, he lumbered through these woods, had long given up delicate footsteps in favour of plowing his way through.

To Rowan’s horror, apparently.

He came across the unhappy-looking youth as well as the wind of her earth (it singed his skin rather unpleasantly) and stopped in his tracks, his mind torn from wherever it was wandering to assess this situation, quickly. He liked talking to the young, because they rarely riled his temper; he was not so beastly as to harm a child, or else, had not done so yet. Women were more dangerous, tended to rouse… something else… and she was pretty – but he couldn’t make out much more than what was glowing from the sun, and it reminded him of something peaceful and angelic rather than sensuous.

So he stood still, feeling his heart beating its joy at finally, at last, finding someone to talk to, and said in a gruff and unused voice, “Sorry if I startled you.”