Drogon

Drogon didn't know what to do with Svenja's rejection. It sat like a weighted stone in his chest, impossible to ignore. He had sworn as a young colt to never allow anyone to have this power over him again, a trauma response to his mother's flippant regard for his emotions as a boy. In truth, Drogon wasn't even sure how Svenja had managed to mean so much to him. He'd singled her out as a means to an end, and then had pursued her out of his own stubbornness... right? It wasn't because he had grown fond of her, much less because a part of him had begun to heal his own broken heart by gleaning pieces of her love and patching them over the broken bits.

Either way, the healing that had begun had been shattered the moment he'd seen the result of her choice. Now there was nothing left inside of him but a hollow chest and that stone of rejection.

He moved more deeply into the jungle, wishing - not for the first time - that his father still held Paradise. He'd give anything for the ability to pick Rougaru's brain, to find a way to release this feeling so that he didn't have to hold it anymore.

Instead of his father, however, he found someone else. The pretty black and white mare was unfamiliar to him, which meant she was either from a neighboring land or someone brand new to the Ridge. The latter made his jaw clench as he remembered the result of Chary's last absence, and the way that the scent of Fell had clung to her skin as her heat had faded.

He couldn't reject them the same way they had cast him to the side, but perhaps he could find his own version of succor in the arms of someone new. "No one should make a pretty girl this sad," he murmured into the space between them as he approached, having noticed the gleam of liquid on her cheeks. "Tell me who he is, and we can beat him up together."

A lie, but when paired with a smile might at least suffice for a hello. Drogon wasn't usually the sort to go for a brawl, but if he were honest? A little physical pain might at least offset some of the rest of it.

Can you feel it?