Drogon

Are we gonna go back home soon? The boy's damning question wipes the contented smile from Drogon's lips and he forces his gaze out and away from the pair to dampen his frustration. It would have made things so much easier if he had just been swept out to sea during their escape, lost to the waves through no fault of their own. But Drogon had already had and eaten his piece of cake today; asking for seconds would just be greedy.

The near-black stallion listened silently as Svenja consoled her son, and when he had his own frustrations under check he turned his gaze back to the colt. "Atlantis is the best place to grow up," he offered confidently, an easy smile on his lips. "Just wait until you see a monkey for the first time."

As he pulled away from the caress he'd offered to the little roan, he was surprised (and felt more than a little guilt) as she reciprocated his touch. Even when he'd been courting her that first fall, he'd struggled with showing any kind of intimacy or fondness. He wasn't an affectionate creature by nature, largely because showing such warmth often resulted in his mother seizing it for her own advantage. He'd spent his whole childhood watching his adoration of his adopted father be wielded with cruel purpose to wound Rougaru, over and over and over again.

Drogon did not necessarily fear that Svenja would abuse his trust in such a fashion, but admitting this softness to himself was just as dangerous.

'Yes,' he wants to lie as she inquires again about the future, promising a certainty that does not exist. This time though, it's not his mother's silver tongue lashing in his mouth, spreading lies for the sake of chaos. This time, the lie comes from Rougaru, from a desire to protect her from the possibility that he might be wrong. That he might have delivered her from the fire straight into a different sort of hell. Drogon didn't think he had. The Ridge was no Paradise - which was where he'd like for his sons to grow up - but it was close enough. The thick jungle and warm, sandy beaches were home to the soot-smudged stallion, and while he was steadily giving up hope that his own sire would return, his connection to the place where he'd been raised had not abated.

Before the word can leave his lips, however, the familiar rolling accent of Charybdis breaks through the quiet, and his gaze lifts to her. In a way, it is strange to see before him the only two women that have ever truly captured his interest. Svenja, with her gentle patience and loyalty, had managed to touch his heart, and Charybdis with her verbal puzzles and cryptic answers, his mind. They are as like to each other as Tinuvel was to Atlantis, and yet he could not deny that he felt a distinct pull toward each of them.

The painted mare is as gracious as he had hoped, and while she mistakes his nephew as his own son, he does not correct her for now. The set of his jaw and the way he does not look toward the colt in question may well give him away, but he is too tired to try and hide it. His feelings about Kazimir were mixed. He disliked that the boy existed, disliked the complications he represented and the pull he would have over Svenja. But was Kazimir's story so dissimilar to his own?

Granted, Kazimir had been stolen rather than abandoned, and Drogon could hardly play a competent version of Rougaru... but it was not so dissimilar that he could not recognize the reflection for what it was. Through Drogon's own actions the boy was now robbed of his true father, and it was up to him - whether he liked it or not - to become the boy's father figure if he was to have one at all.

They move toward water, and Drogon encourages Svenja forward first, hoping to ease any remaining discomfort she had as quickly as possible. It also affords him a moment to try and study Charybdis' expression. Thus far, she'd given him no clear indication of how she felt about him and he could not tell if she was angry at his distance or surprised that he had returned. Hell, he couldn't even tell if she felt any differently about him than she might of a stranger that had wandered through.

Questions about their child, and about what lingered between them - if anything - stayed caged in his mouth, leashed by his discomfort. Drogon was no longer the proud adopted son of a reigning king, but a disgraced and displaced loner desperately seeking refuge for a mare he'd stolen from his own brother. Charybdis would be well within her rights to question them intensively before offering the Ridge as shelter, especially because Drogon doubted that Fell would let Svenja go so lightly. They were both Rougaru's sons after all.

And Drogon knew he had done nothing to assist her in the raising of their child; hell, he didn't even know for certain if they'd had a son or a daughter, and yet here he was, begging for more of her kindness.

"I appreciate your help. I was hoping you would also allow my brother and our son to stay here as well," Drogon started once Charybdis finished, his gaze flicking to Svenja. It occurred to him that he would be doing Charybdis a disservice by not telling her where Svenja and the boy were from (and therefore where the threat would likely stem from), but he knew that he needed to choose his words carefully. "We've just come from the Bay," he said pointedly as his gaze returned to Charybdis. He didn't know if she would understand exactly what that entailed, but he figured that he could explain better later when Svenja and the boy were settled for the night.

"But I've been meaning to speak to you for some time," he hesitated to read her reaction, mentally kicking himself for the way this was going to come out. He had been so consumed by whether or not Charybdis would allow them to stay that he had forgotten to give Svenja a heads-up that Kvasir wasn't his only child on the islands. "To see you again and meet our child. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

Can you feel it?