Try Not Thinking About Thinking

Thranduil

He should have heard them. Yet another clue the stag was off his game. Even though he was further ahead, it was the gold who heard them first. Heavy feetfalls, (some large creature maybe) cracked twig and branch. A shiver ran down his spine, they were getting closer. The gold kept his guise of nonattention, but all the while his hand slipped to his hidden weapons. He was just about to spin on them, rain more hell down on them than the actual rain, when he heard the creature’s voice.

It stopped the gold dead in his tracks. “Rexanna.” He sighed, like when you’ve come home. Then, he laughed. It wasn’t much, just a chuckle, but it felt good. It felt natural…and right. It faded out into a sigh, revealing its real source: relief. Somewhere, deep inside his mind, he was glad not all his friends had been left behind. So it was with a genuine smile that he turns around to see her golden form.

But then her saw her. Here. Not in the Edge. Not in the Basin. And he saw her face…warpped and twisted in worry. And it brings the sinking feeling back to the pit of his stomach. His smile fading again. This wasn’t his world… Yet….He wants to go up and….be closer. Greet her. Hug her. Something…but was it a desperate attempt to remember being home….or something else entirely?...

“They’re here.” He responds quickly, hoping the ugly concern would leave her beautiful face. Even if it was for him and his, he did not like to see it. “Hotaru had the twins before….the Fall…” It sounded weird, wrong, unnatural, made-up “…Galahad and Casca are…” How could he phrase it? How could he admit he and Hotaru had brought into this world such fragile creatures? One crippled by magic, the other by his own body? “…unique, but strong.” They had to have been to survive this journey.

Then his mood fractures, head dropping. She was his friend though…he could tell her. She would know he wasn’t just telling her so she could get in on the latest gossip. “But Hotaru lost Ru’in and Romina…” She would know how it hurt him too (literally with the scars on his back, and to see his mate in that state, to still feel her teeth and hear her screams in his dreams), especially as he still could not hide it from his eyes.

Yet the gold, as if realizing he’s given too much, blinks back the emotions. “What about you?” He tries to pick it back up. His head rises slightly, but he also steps closer to her. “And yours…” Kiada and Kianzo…the twins he had some hand in. He wondered how the colt’s potential would fare here.

He waits, letting her talk…but his tasseled tail is still, and body, even in the rain, is completely attentive to her. It still didn’t feel…real? Of course none of this did…but that’s why he didn’t think about it.

OOC ::
"Speech"
 

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.

Image credit.
@Rexanna