Memories consumed my thoughts. Snippets from when we had been pups, me trying to establish my place as heiress by telling him he was being too mean to Taliesin. How he’d shadowed me from that day forward, through my puphood and adolescence he had been an ever present figure in my life. I remembered the looming rock where I had pushed his boundaries, where first we had begun to realize our feelings for one another. And then spars he’d engaged in with me to make me stronger after my parents had died. It was all of that and more that made his abandonment so much harder to stomach. He had vowed himself to me, his life to me that night after I had won my rightful place as Queen of the Mountain. Discovering my having imprinted on another had hurt him, I knew that. And I could hardly have blamed him for become somewhat of a recluse in the time that followed. But he had simply vanished. He had sworn himself to me, and then he had betrayed me.

Here and now we stood face to face, the storm raging around us. Just when I thought I was ready to move on, here he was standing before me. He was fleeing Spirane yet again, only this time he’d had no intention of even making his return known to me. Looking upon him he seemed almost defeated, and for a split second I wondered what had broken him. But then I remembered how he had broken me, how he’d made me suffer all this time in not knowing what had happened to him. Not so much as a word when I had called after him, bleeding and bruised on my den floor. My Dragon he calls me, a nickname that had developed over time, having molded from previous monikers such as Firefly and Dragonfly and only when I had taken my throne Dragon. “Do not call me that.” I said curtly, filling the pause that might have hung in the air had I remained silent.

I let him speak his piece, the apology and explanation flowing from his vocal chords. I could barely stand to look at him, lifting my eyes to stare over his back and into the rain, letting his form go fuzzy in my vision. Eyes remain hard, and I try my best not to betray my feelings to him. It is when he speaks of begging my love that I can take it no longer. I do not come to beg your love because one such as you deserves so much more. I drown out the words that come after, speaking over him or cutting him off, I did not care. “How can you say that to me?” Beg my love? I had offered it to him openly and he had run from me. But he continues, a growl accenting his words as his paw slams into the ground. There is something different about him, almost as if the fire within him was being snuffed out. And that was the last thing I wanted. Even so my eyes remained lifted, refusing to look upon him lest I lose my composure.

When he drops his head and looks away from me I cannot even bare to look upon him. I loved him, and I knew I would break if I looked upon him now. And I refused to allow myself to crack any more. He admitted his faults, spoke of how he was healing and that only he could heal himself. Suddenly it dawned upon me that it was my fault, I had pushed him to this point. When I had needed something from him that he could not be he had fractured himself in the attempt to become it. Still my eyes remained lifted, though water that did not fall from the sky moistened my gaze, my heart breaking.

“Do not ever presume to know what it is that I need. You forfeited that right when you abandoned me, betrayed me.” I said, eyes moving back and forth but seeing nothing aside from the rain as it assaulted the ground.