In the absence of speech, Sonorae's ears had tilted to and fro to listen to the bird calls overhead as they walked. She had grown accustomed to listening to their chatter over the years, and could not help but notice the way the larger, bright parrot's calls were discordant in the gray stallion's presence. Almost as if they, too, were watching and waiting to see if Temblor would prove beneficial or harmful to Paradise's longtime residents.

When she had, at last, mustered the courage to offer her stilted, awkward question, the new lead took his time in answering. Uncertain of what to do in the meantime, she tried to keep her gaze dancing over the waves, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not bring herself to trust him enough to keep her eyes off of him for long. The sins of the nameless stallion on the Crossing did not belong to Temblor, and Rae knew that. They even bore little resemblance to each other aside from the overwhelming size of their statures and the fact that they were both stallions, but she kept expecting him to behave in the same brutish way.

It was certainly unfair of her to generalize as such. After all, the vast majority of her interactions with a stallion had been with Rougaru, and he was unwaveringly kind and fair to her. The nameless stallion's cruel indifference should have been the exception, not the rule upon which she based her interactions. And yet, reason alone could not undermine the fear that made her want to shrink away from Temblor, even though he had not threatened her since his arrival.

Yes, and no. His cryptic answer gives rise to another fleeting frown, but she interprets his non-answer as a lack of desire for conversation and lapses into silence again. They move forward together, each of them trapped silently within cages of their own making. His turn towards her forces a stop, and her gaze makes its way back to his anxiously as if waiting for a rebuke.

She is baffled to hear him ask for her opinion. It's so incongruous to her assumptions of him that she can only stare at him distrustfully for a long moment as she struggles against the inner conflict. Asking for her thoughts, her preferences, her wants or needs, had been something that only Rougaru (and to some lesser extent, Monster) had ever bothered themselves with. Certainly not the Crossing stallion, and not even Rougaru's sons had spared her the same courtesies, not even while she had been hiding out with Drogon.

It made her question many things, including her future.

"I..." Her voice trailed off before her answer had even really begun, and her brow creased with inner conflict. What she wanted, more than anything, was to curl up at Rougaru's side once more and beg his forgiveness for not accompanying him on his journey. But what she wanted had very little to do with her current situation.

Temblor might have proven himself to be more like Rougaru than the nameless spotted stallion, but Sonorae was painfully aware of how quickly that could change. Would bringing up her absent lover reignite the ferocity she'd seen when he told Annubis off? Would it set him off and change the way he dealt with her? Turn him cruel instead of passive? Or would he deem her too much of a liability and send her away, thereby preventing her from waiting for Rougaru's return?

And if she did opt to go with Annubis, what then? The young stallion had made it abundantly clear that her safety did not matter to him. That she was more of a liability to him than a responsibility, and that if it would prove the slightest bit advantageous to him, he would pawn her off the moment he was able.

Was it better to remain loyal to a ghost that may or may not be alive, let alone ever return to her? To risk her safety and future with someone that was in some way familiar? Or was it better to give all of that up and instead prepare for a future that she had neither asked for, nor knew how to deal with?

"I want to be happy," she murmured eventually, each syllable a stab to her own heart for the betrayal they represented. It was hardly even a half-truth, but it was as close as she felt comfortable to admitting. Even so, clarifying her position to Temblor felt damning in a way she couldn't begin to explain.

"I don't think I would be happy with- with Annubis, I mean." Her voice, while naturally quiet and made even more so by her nerves, stuttered over clarifying an unspoken, generic him that brushed too close to implying Rougaru, and then dropped to a whisper as she named Rougaru's son. Heat prickled at the backs of her eyes, and she had to swallow before she could get the next words to leave her lips. "I was happy here, once."

Her favorite memory danced through her mind - her and Rougaru snuggled together, drawing strength from each other as baby Roux wormed her way in between her parents amidst a gale of giggles - and forced her gaze to drop to the earth in an attempt to recenter herself. She cleared her throat resolutely and raised her shimmering gaze back to the gray stallion, praying that he wouldn't take her weakness for what it was and deem her worthy of being abandoned in the same way that Annubis had.

"Perhaps I can be happy here again."