Meadow

How does he do it? With another question, innocently asked or not, Aidoneus disturbs another piece of her psyche that has always been there, shifting her perspective. For most of her life, Kore has been conditioned against anything different: against intruders and strange men when under Demeter’s care, against association with the common folk - mortals, her dam had called them, as if their lives were so insignificant as to be forgotten the second they were snuffed out. She’d been conditioned against exploring beyond the borders of her home, and had read well into Maslakhat’s own opinions on who deserved to live with them in the Dunes, finding only horses similar to them in hot-blooded breeding. Aidoneus himself, with his strong build, thick coat, and foreign scent, was different enough, but the ideas he shared - as if differences weren’t something to be driven out over time, but encouraged, maybe even celebrated… to Kore, they felt almost revolutionary.

She had tried for years to fit into the mold they’d made for her, but as she’d grown she’d cut herself on its sharp edges. Perhaps it was time to stop pretending that she hadn’t changed into something else entirely.

Kore is in the depths of her self-loathing when she feels the wind shift. Its chill lessens, driving not directly against her but around her. Aidon’s shadow slides towards her, his scent drifting into her nostrils, and as she flicks her gaze up from its spot upon the ground she suddenly finds him much closer than before. Her pulse skyrockets, even as she bites her lip and looks back at the ground, nodding in silent agreement. He had seen the dark clouds of her memories hovering around her slender frame, weighing upon her shoulders, but he didn’t seem to want to punish her for her reluctance to divulge them, as Maslakhat had. Mercifully, he changes the subject soon after, and she lifts her head to follow the direction in which he gestures. Her ears perk, tail swishing in thought. Another question, as open-ended as her future, feeling both feather-light and weighty like a boulder with how it could build or destroy the structure of her life. And yet, it was still so foreign to her. Where did she want to go? Truly want, without the fetters of duty and propriety and what anyone else might think?

Her eyes settle on Aidoneus. With him, she realizes, I would go anywhere.

“A break from the wind sounds nice,” she admits, smiling sheepishly and trying not to get caught up again in her own foolhardiness. “Will you show me the way?” If he moves, she will shift with him, keeping out of the reach of the cold until they reach the cover of the trees. Kore knows she’s imposing, knows she’s asking a lot of him… but she won’t let him go just yet. After all, she’s already taken a risk just by coming to the Crossing. What’s a little bit more?