Desreal: "give me your strength"

“I think you do, though.”

He smiles fractiously, the expression worryingly trite and benevolent all at once. His eyes gleam a gentle silver and in their depths sing the songs of things he has lost; she is not the only one fretful of something missing, or mindful of the hand fate has dealt her these years past – he thinks such worry is in their blood, as he undoubtedly shares it with the rest of the children he has met, and even in Kale, if he had ever known him. She touches his face and he keeps smiling his inexpressible smile, which touches the very base of his lips and spreads outward like some bright, radiating warmth bursting across his face. It shadows him anew and kindles the depths of his eyes to their previous, glorious brightness; together they are lit aflame in the heart of the forest that is as much home as anywhere else will either be, for them.

The stallion parts two of her hairs gently with the tip of his horn, letting her relish the bright, exquisite coldness of it as it hovers near the delicate fabric of her skin. He notices how she is built so leanly, like himself, a warrior in true respects; he has not heard her title, but feels it pulsing through him with the vitality of the wind and trees: Siren, it whispers, Siren, the ocean’s gold. He smiles again and laughs, a bright, childish, radiant sound.

It’s then that he tilts his head, watching her with sober and appended curiosity: “Saphira,” he tastes her name gently, and names a wonder he has been considering for several minutes path, “did you ever learn the name of your mother?”

A shrug ripples almost invisibly across his shoulders. “There is something in you that reminds me of a mare I once knew.”

And killed.