No one has the she you are looking for, old man.
His eyes flashed and he took a decisive step forward, closer to the red dun. No recognition flickered across his expression, despite the fact he should know this stallion well. He’d once wanted to trick him into following his cause, to keep needling at Vadim, back when he lost his vision for the Lagoon due to his own pettiness. But for the mental state Psychedelic was currently in, none of that had happened. He wasn’t in his late twenties, but even before his age touched double-digits. He was afraid to return to the Lagoon with Kasabian dead and Talya glued to his side. Caught in a war between how much he loved her and wanted to protect her, and how much he hated her for making him care.
You should continue your travels away from anyone and anything Psychedelic.
The old stallion snorted, hard. “Are you hiding her from me?” His voice was low. Cold. Angry.
His dark-tipped ears pulled back flat against his neck, hidden behind his tangle of a pale mane. He drew himself another step forward, lashing his tail out behind him. “What did she tell you?” He demanded in that same angry, low tone. His pale face lowered. “She’s not right in the head, you know that? If you think you can love her, you can’t. It’s sick.”
These angry words had been sputtered from his lips before, but to a completely different stallion. This one wasn’t red dun, but a classic champagne, splattered with sabino.
“If I do nothing else right in this world,” he echoed words he’d spoken before, glaring at Nahawi but not really seeing him still, “I will protect my daughter from filth like you, from filth like me. Leave the islands, and leave her too. I’ll take care of the child when she has it.”
Maybe his worst sin to date… but to him, it was justified.
We aren’t here. Snap out of it, old man!
Psychedelic’s ear twitched and a brief look of confusion rippled across the rage that’d painted his features before.
We aren’t there anymore! We took care of it all, remember?
The voice - his longest, truest, most faithful companion - was trying to pull him back out. Psychedelic blinked again, glancing away from Nahawi and up toward the sky, squinting as his gaze met the bright light of the sun. “What’s-” he croaked, then glanced back down and saw Nahawi - really saw him - and didn’t understand how he was standing in front of him, or where they were. His frown dug in deeper.
The last thing he remembered was falling asleep…
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