Common

His invitation kept running through her mind, even as she tried to focus on the answers he was providing to her hastily offered questions. When she had decided to risk the Commons, it hadn't been with the thought of possibly having to wait even longer to settle down. She had hoped to find somewhere that she could make her home right away, so that she could finally begin setting down her own roots, so that maybe someday she would feel like she belonged somewhere. Waiting another span of indeterminate time scared her in a way she couldn't explain. It had something to do with trusting somene else to do something for her, and trusting that they would follow through. That they would not forget her, or move on, or leave her behind.

She hadn't realized how much it had hurt to be left behind by her sister.

Vadim spoke of his past, and of the anger that inspired him to hurt others and she frowned in thought. He hadn't spoken of specifics, and now that the gist of it was out in the open, she didn't know if she wanted him too. Rumor said that her own sire had once been a loathesome sort of man, and that time and love had eventually changed him, but Esme didn't know how true that was. Her own relationship with the tobiano man that had sired her had been sporadic at best, and while she was happy that her mother was happy with him, she did not harbor the same loyalty. Her frown persisted, but she nodded in acknowledgement of what he had said, grateful for what honesty he offered.

He spoke then of finding a sort of peace in the Badlands, and she chuckled dryly. Her time in the Badlands, fleeting though it had been, had been nothing short of chaotic. She had attempted to settle there once, only for her conversation with Rafe to be hijacked by her siblings. It had been good to see them again, of course, and she was grateful for news of their wellbeing, but it had certainly curtailed her attempt to settle there and had set her on another cycle of aimless wandering that had spanned years. "It seems we had very different experiences there," she murmured, thinking back to her own escape from the canyon's stallion. For what it was worth, she hadn't sensed maliciousness in the overo, just a persistence that she had been unwilling to entertain.

Esme fell back into silence as he confessed to having a twin and her brow furrowed in response, her words getting stuck in her thorat. "So do I,' she murmured after a long moment, her heart squeezing with the loneliness that had followed Aysu's disappearance. She had spent so many years searching Salem for her that she had lost the majority of her youth. And yet, even now, if she thought she might find her sister again, she would do it all again. They had not shared a womb, but they had shared a mother, and a heart, and a spirit, and that had been enough for Esme. "Her name is Aysu, though I haven't seen her since we were much, much younger."

Silence stretched for a moment. "Thank you for telling me," she finally murmured quietly, her gaze peeking back up towards him. Logic told her that this was a terrible idea, that placing her hope and trust in a near perfect stranger that had already admitted he had been the kind of stallion that had been imprisoned multiple times for his bad behavior was a fool's errand... and yet.

And yet, what if she was wrong?

What if this was her shot at finding the sort of love that her parent's shared? What if this was the only chance she was going to get at happiness? At the future she'd dreamed of.

After all, what was a little more waiting after doing so many years of it?

"Okay." She murmured, a nervous smile quirking the corners of her lips upward. "I'll wait for you, Vadim."