She doesn’t exactly know what to do with this changed Zevulun. Some aspects are the same - that soft look on his pale face that makes Riesling want to run and hide, the softness in his outlook. But his decision not to give up the Prairie, to offer to co-lead and welcome this stranger with open arms? That never would have been the choice a season or two ago.

He would have listened to her harsh words, her demands that he take back power and defend the herd and scold her in that gentle way he has, make her feel like a monster for fighting for protection, for safety. Zevulun, for all his efforts, has been unable to soften her sharp edges, to whittle down her grasping claws and snarling teeth that demand her family thrive above all else. But she had grown used to his rebuff, to accepting that while he hears her out he rarely does as she would, if she were to lead.

As she stares at him, as she comprehends those soft word Riesling can’t help but cock her head, golden eyes calculating as she stares at him. What could it have been, if it wasn’t a brush with death? Against her better judgment, her curiosity is rising. She wants to know what could have spurred change in Zevulun after so long. Selfishly, she hopes she played a part in it. That when she departs for the Badlands, unsure if she will ever really return (not with Daire here, lingering, not with the hurt of her appearance, Zevulun’s insistence she remain still festering like an open wound) he will have been permanently marked by him, a calling card left so that he won’t forget her so easily.

“No,” she tells him, less vitriol in her voice than she had hoped to add. “I won’t follow you.” She won’t go to the Savanna with him; Claret and Castillon both will follow, unwilling to leave their home island. But Riesling…she cannot stay with him.

And if she examines it, presses herself more she knows where the desire for distance comes from. A wound like that, at his age? The risk is great that Zevulun just…wastes away. That he never recovers, cannot take back the Prairie and dies a disposed ruler left alive only by the grace of another. Riesling doesn’t think she could bear it; not after so long. She doesn’t love him (isn’t sure she can love, really - not in the way others mean it) but. But she does care for him, in her own way; she would not have remained so long if that weren’t the case.

Losing him is inevitable; but if she starts now, if she draws it out, perhaps it will not be a mortal wound.