FORTUNE FORTUNE SMILING FATE
I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU MUCH OF LATE
NEED YOU NOW AND CANNOT WAIT
BUT WANNA LOOK, YOU'RE NOT AROUND

He looked lost, forlorn he was the fawn away from the doe. For all his bronze bulk Aquila seemed small. Small in the subtle features of his face, the lips that would turn downwards when he looked to the side and found nothing. Found no one there. They slid back up, the tilt of his mouth, into a straight and neutral line. There was no one and still he searched, he walked a path not of a patrol but of a hunt; he sought out sign or trace and was coming up empty handed at each turn. Eventually though after about a half mile trek northward through the grove his looking ceased, his head did not turn right or left and he did not poke around a rock or log. The latest breeze rolled through the tressles of hair down his chest, curling the fly aways and wrapping up his face. The next once danced across his brow and he sighed into the groove's breeze. Aquila walked a path through the area where the trees began to get sparcer in the north, his gaze on the ground ahead and large feet thumping out a pace gentle and calm.

@Furia / @Poe

ART BY RABS , CODE BY LARS

let me light up the sky

Furia rarely intended on bumping into natives. She disliked them, obviously, and has a tendency to shh away whenever she'd picked up on the scent of one. It was easier said than done most days, but at least she wasn't out starting anything. For once.

That afternoon she was simply lounging in her favorite tree, snoozing happily away while Jamil scampered around somewhere nearby. The grove wasn't an ideal place to remain a permanent resident, but she was making do for now.

A familiar face crept onto view, this time looking surprisingly forlorn. She hadn't seen him looking quite so sour since he'd lost the challenge for the Bluffs, and though she found it easy to simply ignore him.. well, she was compassionate.

"Why so down?" she asked from above, resting her head along the branch with a flick of her tail.

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Table by Amanda

FORTUNE FORTUNE SMILING FATE
I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU MUCH OF LATE
NEED YOU NOW AND CANNOT WAIT
BUT WANNA LOOK, YOU'RE NOT AROUND

In his daze he could have walked around the tree she was perched in for hours without knowing she was up there; he was too focused on his own feet and the grass they were tredding over to look up. Her voice caught him off guard and rather abruptly he stood stock still and his head shot up- chin shot up, vision aligned to the voice. To the familiar face he would have placed low on the list of lions he would want to run into right now while feeling so down, vulnerable and out of his usual. He didn't hide the slight roll of his eyes from her. If anything could be said to the benefit of them and their previous interactions they knew where they stood and to hide any of his emotion from her felt dishonest now. His silver eyes fell away from her after they grew still and drifted and to the ground off in the distance- his rump plomped on the ground below him and his breath left him in one great big sigh. For a real solid second he thought about why he'd even answer- he could just walk off here and be amongst his own thoughts. And then his voice rose up. "I'm missing someone." His voice trailed off, thick aura of doubt lingering in the last of his voice and hanging there in the open air in front of his lips. A real heavy intonation implied it wasn't just anyone someone but someone someone.

@Furia

ART BY RABS , CODE BY LARS

let me light up the sky

Ah, yes, there was the charming personality that had stolen the hearts of thousands. Furia's brow furrowed at the eye roll, but she did little else but blink innocently down at him in response. She was far too accustomed to being miserable to be bothered by one native and his grumpy face, so she simply chose to ignore it. Besides, his story tugged at her heartstrings a smidgen considering how easy it was to relate. Furia shifted in the branch, sighing.

"My husband left me, too. I don't know if I should miss him or hate him, but.. yeah, I get that." Furia frowned, wishing she had more than an anecdote to offer him. She flicked her tail and tilted her head, watching. "I'm sorry, for what it's worth. Missing someone isn't easy.." Particularly when it wasn't clear whether they missed you, too.

light it up for you

Table by Amanda

FORTUNE FORTUNE SMILING FATE
I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU MUCH OF LATE
NEED YOU NOW AND CANNOT WAIT
BUT WANNA LOOK, YOU'RE NOT AROUND

"Sorry- about your husband." The bite of her words stung. Visibily it moved as a ripple down through his face with his ears first falling flat against his skull and a hurt scowl then morphing over his lips after the words passed through them. It hit close to home and it suddenly felt like something had grabbed onto his throat and was trying to drag it down into his chest. "My husband too-" Aquila exhaled. His sides depressed as he expelled the air from his lungs and then pushed it a little further until there was nothing left inside of him. "At least he was supposed to be? Is supposed to be?" It hurt to say, the uncertainty a knife. When did presence tense become a fruitless dream to hold onto? When was too soon to use past tense? He had dreamed of an ideal wedding, he had expected the stangers and non-native lions to ruin it if anything bad were to happen. This he wasn't prepared for. It hurt, but saying it helped. And not to someone who knew him, not someone who knew Caeso and the lengths of the devotion the two men had together. Saying it aloud to someone who didn't know a lick about his personal life was the smallest bit of good feeling he could piece together right now.

@Furia

ART BY RABS , CODE BY LARS

let me light up the sky

Furia shook her head. "It's alright, it happened a few months ago. Right after our son was born." She kept her voice neutral, but a single glance at her features would betray the way she felt about the matter. Right after their son was born, a bright pink boy in a world far too dark for his light to shine. She sighed, rolled her shoulders to stretch out some of the muscles there.

Hearing his own husband had left him was.. well, kind of amusing in a fucked up way. Finally they had a connection, a shared misery, and Furia wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I wish I could give you optimistic advice, but it's hard to be positive when it feels like you've been betrayed by the one closest to you." With that, she dropped onto the earth with a muted thud. "I'll tell you it gets easier, though. It doesn't hurt as much to think about him anymore. Besides, he could always come back." There, a shred of positivity for him to nibble on.. maybe. "For what it's worth, you seem like a nice guy sometimes." Once.

@Aquila

light it up for you

Table by Amanda

FORTUNE FORTUNE SMILING FATE
I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU MUCH OF LATE
NEED YOU NOW AND CANNOT WAIT
BUT WANNA LOOK, YOU'RE NOT AROUND

It was a little cruel of Maua. His family had succeeded in many ways to find connections with these strangers and begin to weave them into their lives, into his life by proxy. He had failed. Except here. With @Furia. Over absent husbands. Down the line of healing maybe Aquila would feel just so much amused at the irony. Right now it just hurt. It hurt because Caeso was gone and he simultanously facing that while reckoning his own anger that had so easily been directed her way, the stranger's way. "I'm not good at optimism anyways, you're better off not trying." That was Caeso's thing. He was the kind one of them, he was the lighthouse when Aquila needed. It had taken him so damn long to realize his feelings... it had been too late. When, if, he came back like she suggested would it still be too late for them? Aquila did not know after all what had drawn his fiance away. He shrugged absently but clung tight to that scrap of hope for all it was worth. "He's a red head like you. Brown pelt, light stockings. If you happen to see him..." His voice drifted off. He wasn't sure what to say, what to ask of her if it was even right to do so. His head shook and the dark bangs of his mane rapidly swayed side to side as he did so. "Nevermind."

What she said then clearly surprised him. He thought backwards rapidly through their encounters, working through the jarbled fading memories of what was said and done between them, to each other. He didn't find a single nice thing to his credit. It had certainly not been a goal of his to be nice, and it wasn't a state he usually happened into by accsident. He stared intensly towards her for a second, silver eyes narrowing with suspicion and disbelief. "... you don't have to lie to try and make me feel better. I'm not nice. I don't try to be." He tried to protect, to make the hard decisions and scrutinize the rose glasses everyone else looked through sometimes. By definition he was not nice, he was going to step on toes.

ART BY RABS , CODE BY LARS

let me light up the sky

How absolutely unbecoming of the man to look so sad. Anger was his default, and seeing him anything else was quite distressing. She had no doubt there were other sides of him, but she'd only seen one. Still, he seemed easy enough to keep an eye out for. "I'll keep my eyes open." Although she doubted the man would want to be found if he were still lingering in Amaryllis -- why else would he have gone off the grid? Chances were he was gone, just not necessarily forever.

"I'm not lying." Furia's tail flicked. "All I see when I look at you is myself. In a shitty place in life, struggling, not great with making friends." She was trying, however much it was failing. "A lot of men in my life have attacked or assaulted me, and you've done neither. That automatically wins you the nice guy award." Furia tilted her head, huffing softly. "I'm sure you're a softie somewhere in there, just like I'm not a horrendous bitch somewhere in here. They're just walls to protect us." Did that make any sense for him?

@Aquila

light it up for you

Table by Amanda

FORTUNE FORTUNE SMILING FATE
I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU MUCH OF LATE
NEED YOU NOW AND CANNOT WAIT
BUT WANNA LOOK, YOU'RE NOT AROUND

Aquila shook his skull lightly but lacking any forcefulness to his denial. @Furia was not wrong just... not exactly right. Not like he saw it. But she was closer to hitting the nail on the head than anyone else had ever been save for Nymeria. Save for Caeso... actually... had anyone else even thought about it? "The walls aren't for me. They're for them-" He managed to lift his head a tad towards the Brook pridelands. "But yeah." He continued with a calmness in his voice, introspective gaze turning glossy and unfocused. His silver eyes were looking past her and to the leaves beyond. "You're not all bad, you non-natives. I'm scared to be wrong about who though. For them." So maybe he could make friends if he gave it a shot, maybe he wasn't bad at it like she suggested. He wouldn't know. He didn't want to try in the first place.

"Your bar is low for nice guys." He commented in a sad way, a frown across his features. It did explain why when they'd first met she'd looked more like a crisp fall leaf in the breeze, trembling, than a woman. Aquila could forgive her some of her aggression towards him too. No one deserved a gold star simply because they were half way decent and didn't touch someone. "Are you safe now... from those men?"

ART BY RABS , CODE BY LARS

let me light up the sky

Furia followed his gaze in the direction of the Brook, training an ear towards him as he spoke. She wanted to tease him and lighten the mood, but even Furia Hodari could tell when a joke would be poorly timed. The guy was downright heartbroken and sitting inside a castle of bricks he had surrounded himself with on the premise of protecting others. Furia.. could understand. She had once tried to give Laraila to Hanneth because of how horrible of a mother she'd been, but it was only after that she realized that while she had been claiming it was for Laraila's sake, it had been for her own. "I've told myself the same thing. I'm helping everyone by building this fortress around me, but.. I wasn't. You're not. They're your friends and family, they'll love you no matter what." She said with a half-shrug, recalling how Laraila had adamantly refused anyone else as her mother. "I know that sounds like a bunch of shit coming from me, but, you know." Furia was trying, at least.

"No, we're not all bad. Some of the assholes made their way over here too, though. I guess you natives aren't all bad, either." There was an attempt at a smile on her lips, something akin to an olive branch -- and likely as close to an apology as he would ever receive from her.

As for her standards, well. "You're not the first one to say that, surprisingly." She had no idea why her taste in men had been so horrific for so long, but she had been chasing a high in the wake of her parents' death and fallen into a vicious cycle. Being safe from them was an entirely different scenario, and she hesitated for a few seconds. "I don't know. The one who.. well, the worst, is still out there. He's come for me in the dark before and I can't say he won't do it again." Her whiskers twitched. "The only difference is now I've moved, so it would take him much longer to track me down." So there was a blessing, she guessed.

@Aquila

light it up for you

Table by Amanda