Life ain't always beautiful

doing fine enough to know that everyone's a little broken

Offering up some horses to the Dragoons is the least she can do, a small help with travel and transport amid the chaos of their forced evacuation. She can’t really fathom what it’s like—being uprooted, losing a place like that—so she keeps her gestures simple: what she can offer, what she knows. Some sweet tea, some wagons, and her lay of the land.

She loaned Koa Beans, the dark colored horse he'd remember from the Ursur hunt. She’s riding a younger grey mare, Pepper, and using the trip to put some training on the youngster who needs to practice patience on the trail. After a lot of bit-fighting, a few rolled spurs, and one bout of cussing, Colt leads Koa through the gambit’s heart, with Pepper put into a proper sweat. "What d’you think? This your new Dragoon HQ?" Colt asks, glancing over at Koa as they pull up near the blazing fire.

She tips her head with a faint smile, not quite sure this is what he pictured, but it’s private, it’s mysterious. Perfect HQ material.

For the first time in a long time, I'm doing fine

COLT

Koa

"It's a pretty solid possibility, yeah." Koa looks speculatively at their surroundings, taking it all in. The maze had been a bit of an endeavor to get through, but there was something appealingly romantic to the challenge; it gives the hypothetical HQ a hidden clubhouse feel. Colt'd certainly been enthused by the prospect, which piqued the young man's interest enough to agree to ride out here with her.

Not that he'd need too much coaxing. After the insanity of the past few weeks, the idea of getting on a horse and away from it all had appealed greatly to Koa and his rather thin-worn nerves. Leaning forward in his saddle, Koa scrubs gently on Beans' neck as he watches Pipsqueak approach the blazing fire, her eyes reflecting the eternal flame like mirrors of dark ink. "The dragons would certainly approve," he chuckles, enjoying her antics. "Not a lot of room for training grounds, though. Hard to do much in such a tight space, and I'd worried about my recruits getting constantly lost." He rolls his eyes fondly at Colt, a smile on his unshaved face.

Let's fall in love for the night
And forget in the morning

doing fine enough to know that everyone's a little broken

She watches the dragon's antics with a hint of amusement as Pipsqueak regards the flaming bowl like sailors do sirens. "Huh, I'd always heard soldiers knew their way around, especially in tight quarters," she quips back with a contained laugh that presses into one side of her cheek. "Could be a new challenge for training, weed out the weak points," she points out a bit more seriously now. Though she follows it with a shrug, uncommitted to this location, or any really.

"The main city would probably be easiest," she admits, though there's perhaps the slightest flicker of disappointment at something so ordinary. A burning bowl of fire has a certain charm to it, and is a bonus during winter... although a downside in summer. "Certainly shields you from some of the more interesting regions Frey has touched on around here." The baby garden in the Barrows is one such unique place, though harmless.

"You can make anywhere work if you put in the effort," she says with something that suggests she knows a thing or two about taming land into something useful. "We'll all help you," she offers quietly, her gaze soft, but not pitiful as she regards him. She leans against the grey's neck, arms crossed, hands propping her chin up. "Terrible thing that happened to all of you, I can't imagine losing so much so fast." Maybe not the most helpful thing, but something honest. "We'll do right by you here though, in the ways we can."

For the first time in a long time, I'm doing fine

COLT

Koa

Koa hums low in his throat, half in amusement, half in acknowledgment. "You're not wrong," he laughs, giving her a sidelong look. "Though we're more used to tight quarters where you have to navigate bodies. Mazes that shift under your boots aren't our usual speed."

Still, there’s something grounding in the way she says it: we'll all help you. A promise he hadn't asked for, but values even more for it being freely given. Koa sits back in his saddle, letting Beans relax beneath him, and looks past the flickering fire to the maze they'd just come through. Its twisting pathways and shadowed corners feel a little less ominous, knowing he doesn't have to go through them alone.

"You'd think we'd be used to losing things by now," he says after a moment, his voice quieter. "But.. no one trains you for loss. Not really. Not the real kind. The kind where you lose the center of things, and your whole world view suddenly has a gaping hole you have no idea how you're going to fill."

His hand lifts absently to scratch behind his ear, fingers catching in the thick hair that has grown longer than usual. "Gotta keep moving forward though. Doing what we can. Sure, there's gods and demigods fighting the big fights, but at the end of the day it's us little people who have to look after our own." He glances her way again, something unsure tucked behind the smile that pulls at his mouth. "I appreciate the loan of the horse. And the advice. And you. Doing what you can. That... helps more than you probably think."

Let's fall in love for the night
And forget in the morning

doing fine enough to know that everyone's a little broken

She doesn't know him too well, but she resonates with his take on loss and the way he freely offers it. Gods, what an idea, talking about how much it sucks instead of just holing up in your dusty house and setting everything on fire, even your insides. Though, there's something to be said about how pretty a flame can be, how clean it can leave things. Maybe a little darker, a little more brittle, but changed in a way that feels like you could call it healing.

"I think the losing is the training," she admits with a sigh, leaning up off the horse's neck as the weight of loss sits a little too heavy in her. Maybe not the same kind as him, but the kind that rips the ground away all the same, and falling on your ass never feels good no matter how many times you've done it. "Something to harden you up, or wake you up." Both, for her. "If we never lost... we'd be too soft to survive the world." It's not a kind sort of life, for anyone or anything. It's survival, no other way about it. "Maybe the world needs changing, but that'd be no easy feat, so a lot easier to change a person." Which is saying something, since people don't like to change either.

She offers him a knowing smile and a nod as his gratitude drifts over. "It takes all of us," she agrees, "but I admit the gods have a way of simplifying some things. Frey's always helped me when shit gets hard, when it feels too big for my hands alone."

For the first time in a long time, I'm doing fine

COLT

Koa

He doesn't know her losses, but can sense them there, hidden behind the knowing eyes and confident posture, the way she grips her reins and settles in the saddle like she was born to sit there. It reminds him of his mother in an odd way, of Anju, of his aunt: swords clasped in strong, calloused hands, an air of belonging to their place in the world that Koa had idolized as a child.

Perhaps the hardest part of growing up is learning how much of that is in fact a facade.

A small snort escapes him at the mention of Frey, the boy shaking his head as his lips twist in mild distaste. "Well, that's good- they didn't seem to give much of a fuck about the Void when I talked to them. Thought infection wasn't a problem, which... well." He shrugs, remembering the blasé way Frey had responded to Everest's infection. "But I admit I don't know much about them, personally. My family has mostly followed Ludo, and I'm sworn to Safrin now." Pride fills him as he finishes this statement, his fondness for his goddess obvious in his face.

Let's fall in love for the night
And forget in the morning

doing fine enough to know that everyone's a little broken

Admittedly, his words don't surprise her. Not the negative take on Frey, that always manages to tug her 'brows up, because in all her experiences Frey has been one of the easiest and most level-headed gods to work with. There's always two sides to a story though, and there's a lot to be said about how reality gets warped by perception, and how anything in hindsight becomes sharper than in the moment. Would Frey still give the same answer now? Maybe.

She can understand why that might have been the response he received. Nature isn't really the kind to grant favor to one thing over another. Infection is all part of the balance, and sometimes the necessary progression of something that's become too large to sustain. Although there's little comfort in thinking Frey might stand idly by while they're all wiped out, she can respect that it'd be a possibility. Selfishly, she'd fight like hell for her life, for the ones that mattered to her, but in the end they don't really matter much at all. There's a different kind of comfort in that thinking though.

"Hmm," she says thoughtfully, not surprised to hear he's one of the ones Safrin has collected. "I can appreciate what each god offers," she settles on, tucking her warning back behind her teeth as a thin smile greets his pride. "Well, let's continue on a search for your new headquarters then," she suggests as she nudges her horse back into movement, leading the way out of the heart of the labyrinth with the practice of a local, leaving behind the notions of gods and alliances to the bowl of flame.

[FIN]

For the first time in a long time, I'm doing fine

COLT