Falls

She is warm, but not in the way the Lagoon is warm in the summer, but the way the tide pools are warm right before the tide comes back in. The sort of warmth that wraps around you, soothing away the stiffness in your bones.

I did miss you, Khyber. I smile reflexively, without thinking, and chide myself immediately. When the hell had I grown so soft? It doesn't help that she doesn't shrink away as I spill what is on my mind, but listens quietly and offers her own comment about Garmr. It is strange to think he will be gone soon, and I am no closer to reaching a decision on what to do about it.

Instead of focusing on that, though, she asks of my illness and I do not know what to do with the feeling her concern elicits. Why should she care? So many of the mares we kept as trinkets yearned for freedom, but so few of them seemed to truly desire our company.

"I am now," I offer with a lopsided grin, though I shy away from the memory of those long months. I rarely felt pain unless it caused other symptoms, and I imagined that was what had caused the problem initially. Whatever wound it was that had allowed the poison to seep into my blood had gone largely unnoticed until the rest of my body began to shut down. For most of the past year I'd been too weak, my muscles too atrophied to do much more than drag myself to water and back. It was a miracle I had survived at all, and a shock to me that I had not lost my position in the meantime.

Thankfully, she moved onto commentary about the Lagoon and my ears tipped forward in her direction, usually locked onto what she had to say. There is wisdom in her words, but not the sort that is immediately helpful. The problem was that there was no clear path, no way of knowing what either of the two prospects would be like. I knew little of them, and what little I knew had proven to me that they were equally unpredictable.

Wechuge, on the surface, seemed like the better fit. He was more like Garmr, but where Garmr held a thread of loyalty to the Lagoon and it's men beneath his iron rule, Wechuge apparently had none. He was chaos without reason, a prime example of what it was to do what he wanted, when he wanted, and how he wanted. Which, on the surface, seemed like it would allow me to keep raiding and plundering and generally causing chaos.

But it was also a risk.

He had already attempted to drag Izumi back from Paradise and seemed to show no regard for what mares belonged to who, which was something Garmr had instituted as a rule during his tenure. I brought men in, and in return, I got to keep my own set of mares. With Wechuge, there was no saying what would come next.

Rutger, on the other hand, was slightly easier to predict. He would have been even easier to predict if Garmr hadn't gone and brought Tyr home, thereby "solving" his life's goal. What the man would do next was unknown, but judging from the context clues around Rutger assisting Tyr's escape and hiding in the Hills, it wasn't likely to be the sort of living that I was accustomed to. I'd heard enough of what the Lagoon had been like back in the day when they were trying to be goody two-shoes.

I was not cut out for that life.

She had a point about both options being temporary, though. And in that affirmation, I found my answer. Wechuge was too unknown to be safe, and for better or worse, I had some pull over Rutger. It would still feel a bit like betraying the brotherhood by selecting him, but at the same time, we would be better off without the cowardly likes of Abraxas and Thranduil anyway. The Lagoon, after all, was not meant to be a holding bay for your pretty little herd while you waited for the opportunity to claim a land.

And yes, I did see the irony in that, given my own harem.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn't initially see her reach for me, and so the smile that I wore in response was unguarded and uncensored. Coupled with the way she teased me and I felt strangely lighter than I had been when I'd strolled out the Lagoon this morning, and I doubted it was all due to the way she had helped me reason through my tangled thoughts. "Ego is still intact," I respond, half-laughing, and reach out to return the favor, lingering perhaps a moment longer than I strictly needed to.

She skirts my next question, though, a fact I might not have clocked so thoroughly if it were not for the fact that she immediately changed the subject. "Alright," I answer, watching her face as if that might suddenly reveal the answer of what was on her mind. "Lead the way, I'll be right beside you."

Stallion - Adult - 15.2 - Brown Overo