I've known cruelty.


Her words cause his heart to still. How could anyone of been cruel to her? His brow furrows as he peers at her. She is young and full of life, beautiful and witty. How could anyone of been cruel? "Whomever treated you cruelly is a fool," he growls as his ears slide into his knotted mane - momentarily as he thinks of such things happening to her.

It is only another breath before she turns her face to him - her next words cause his glacial blues to grow wide and a smirk to tug at his lips. "If that is what you desire," his smirk widens. "And I would enjoy your company," he says with a nod of his bone-white skull. He dares to step closer to her and notices her breath that is held behind her lips and he swears he can hear the sound of her heart as it thunders against her ribs. He reaches to brush his whiskered lips across her shoulder before he angles his body to the frothing sea.

"Stay close and I will show you to the Ridge, where brilliant colored macaws and breath taking waterfalls await."

The frothing surf washes around his ankles and tugs at the feathers of his legs. A rainbow of colors splash around him as the sun reflects through the dropplets that spray around them. He pauses at the edge of the frothing sea and lets her take in all that is the Ridge. A dense wall of vegetation looms in front of them, there is the insistent caws of the macaws, and towering rocky cliffs that jut from the crashing sea.

"Velkominn, to the Ridge."