Arrow Lake & i wonder (not for the first time) what happened to your wings

She could’ve squinted right back at him,sighed in relief that he wasn’t about to tell a story of them, stiffened at his final verdict of her, and— stumbled entirely over a root at her hocks. Without ever meaning to, she plomped into a sit with a warble of surprise, and then looked to Verx—

Oh, Trigeda? 

Aurëwen listened then, rapt and wondering and teetering in her unsteady sit. A terrible, nightmare quartet; scrappish males vying for an uncertain female; and she found herself sympathizing with Trajan, actually. “Oh, he sounds sweet,” the herbalist had mused, and quietly listened to the rest of the story. Cyrus’ death was a bit of a brow-raiser for her, and when the ending of happily ever after? came, her only response was a thoughtful blink.

It was a classic militant tale: a soldier passes, and his comrade protects and provides for the beloved left behind. The warmth and liveliness that Verx has spun it with, though, had made it worth listening to. Aure opened her mouth to comment further, but it dwindled when she saw the wistfulness of him.

Seeing his cloudy, nearly-crestfallen manner which he ended the story with, her eyes fell away to give him his own privacy — something she’d been slow to learn to do when it came to others, but had learned all the same. So, then, in an attempt to coax him from his sorrows: “When I was a yearling, I uh... somehow this, ah, stampede started.” 

And then, as if that explained everything away with no further elaboration at all, she rose to her paws with a little, breathy “Huh” and pranced away from Verx. He could easily overwhelm her with the pace she set, if he wished to; she wouldn’t try to dance from his reach as she always did.