Solomon rarely set his feet to wandering from the Cove these days. Tinuvel had been his home since he had first arrived on the islands, and a part of him had grown roots that stretched down well beyond the permafrost, deep into the heart of the island itself. The fierce winter isle was home to him in a way his father's homeland, his grandsire's nation, had never been. This was where he belonged, and the older he became, the more apparent this truth was to him.
His heart sometimes wandered in the safety of the night sky though, ever hungry for the possibility of finding a new spark or rekindling a lost flame. Bathsheba and Eeva's arrival had set his mind into motion again, awakening memories of early years that he had thought long buried. He barely remembered his brief interaction with Himena, but the thought of those early, frenetic seasons brought faces to mind that were not so easily forgettable. Harley Quinn, his first mare, gone from him before he'd even had a chance to meet his first island-born child. Valka, and her fierce determination to forge her own path, no matter the cost. Sabriel, and the long path he'd set her on before he'd ever realized how wrong he was. And Golden Illusion, who had taken better care of his herd on her own than he'd ever managed.
He thought of them often, but most frequently in the long quiet hours of pre-dawn, after even the most ambitious night owls had ceded wakefulness to the darkness. Their memories made him restless tonight, and not even the familiar path down to Uriah's little grove quieted the yearning that gripped at his heart. So he murmured a soft word to Xerxes, to Xiomara, and let himself slide into the tumultuous ocean.
He lingered far longer than he often did on the Crossing, tracing the crisscross of paths across the wide island. Few of the scents he encountered were familiar to him, owing to his relative seclusion as of late. He didn't even know if Oswin still ruled the Peak, or if Cullen still haunted the Lagoon. They were things he
should know, as Tinuvel's king, but his desire to seek out the answers was minimal. Both the head and tail of the crossing had been as silent lately as the Cove had been.
By the time he began to cross back towards his homeland, the sky had already yielded to dawn's blush and watched it fade away. Here on the Crossing, some sliver of warmth still clung to the land, keep the ground open and clear rather than the snowcover that had already fallen up north. The lean tobiano sighed softly, almost frustrated with himself for the time and energy he'd wasted coming here, and then froze as he saw her.
There was no mistaking the small Yakut for anyone or anything else. She was no dream. No delusion. No figment of an imagination running wild. He knew, because he had never pictured her wearing such an expression. In his memories, she was fearless and undaunted, always so damnably certain of herself. Never this... shell of herself.
He stopped short, pale hooves scuffing the cold-hardened ground, and simply stared. She'd been gone for so long that he had begun to believe that she had left the islands entirely, and when Bacardi had yielded the Bay to Fell, he had assumed that
if she ever returned, it would be to
his side, not Solomon's. And yet here she was, alone, again.
Not that she returned to you at all, a vicious voice reminded him, whispering insidiously in his ear.
She would know where to find you, if it were you that she wanted. The Cove. She would have come to the Cove if she had come for him, and he knew it even before the voice finished the thought.
You left her, and now she's done the same to you. Fair is fair, in love and war.
Solomon dragged in a ragged breath, steeling himself against what seemed to be certain disappointment, and stepped toward the little Yakut who had once held a piece of his heart, who had once carried the blood of his blood twice and borne them life.
"Welcome back," he breathed into the space between them, the words pluming in the chilled air. He didn't know how to feel, or what to say, but his gaze rested on her longingly all the same. It would be so easy to settle himself at her side as he once had, as his advisor, his shield. To ply his freckled lips through the salt-crusted strands of her mane in open welcome.
But he does not. Instead, he murmurs
"I always hoped you would come back someday."
And it is unfair of him - wantonly greedy - for him to say what comes next, but he can no more stop them than he can the longing that thrums deep and low in his chest. She had chosen another, and blatantly told him that he had done too little, too late to bridge the gap his absence had caused, and yet still he wanted her. Wanted to mend the bridge he had so self-righteously unraveled after she'd left Kesja tohim. He'd kept the embers of their bonfire burning, despite knowing the futility of it, and they flared at her presence.
"I never did say that I was sorry, for the way things ended, and the way I acted."
He lets the moment settle, relishing in the few heartbeats in which he can pretend that this moment would be their reunification and not just a meeting of old acquaintances.
Stallion | Dutch Harness Horse Mutt | Champagne Grullo Tobiano | 17 Hands | The Cove