The dragon seems amused by her surprise; apparently, it was normal, wherever he was from, to have scaly forelegs and a thick, spike-laden tail, with leather wings to boot. Gwyn was sure glad she had not come from such a place; though she had barely been born to Helovia before it was gone, the girl remembered it as being simple and beautiful, without frightening people in it like this stranger. The most imposing person she’d ever met was Wessex, and even the large, warrior mare wasn’t that frightening, once the filly had been around her long enough.
That he was but one-third of a dragon did not make much difference to Gwyn’s degree of distrust and innate fear. Any sort of dragon was liable to be dangerous, from what she had heard, and though he hadn’t yet attacked and killed her, the spark-maiden was sure to be wary of the possibility, even once she begins to lower her defensive guard.
“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, adding with more clarity, “dad said they sometimes breath ice and lightning, too. Maybe not here, though...”
His laugh is warm and big, and when her refusal to snuggle with the brute draws it into the air, she looks back from her foraging with a quick glance. Glad she doesn’t have to cuddle anyone she doesn’t know, and comforted by the kindness evident in the stranger’s chuckle, she goes back to her searching with a distinct, single word reply rising from her location:
“Good.”
It does not remain so, however; the inquiry into where her parents were quickly turns her somewhat blasé mood into one of deep sadness. Even the pops of the sticks coming apart beneath the pressure of her golden hooves is somehow somber, and when the large man remarks that she is lost, she doesn’t say anything, or react as if she’d heard at all. At least, that is, until Roscorro tells her his name, which unfortunately is followed by more painful questions which she does not know many of the answers to. Still, she watches the stick he’d used to light the fire slowly be eaten away by the larger one which grows from it, until it is a red hot, glowing ember that is all but indistinguishable from the others building at the glowing heart of the pit.
“My name is Gwyn,” she says, watching the embers; their yellow-orange light casts dancing shades across her dark features, and her light blue gaze reflects the playful leaping of the blaze which fights the winter night’s chill, “my dad and I have been exploring awhile, since before the ice came. We never really had a home here.”
She knows what a home is, despite having had it for barely a season of her life before it was stolen away from her. The want for one leaves an ache in even as young a heart as hers.
“I lost him in the mist, though,” she sighs, her head falling low, lower than the wide, dark curves of her chest, “and I can’t find the scary forest, either, though I've looked for days. So I decided to wait here, wherever here is.”
|
Solanis
