Andarin: The Mountains: kivioq;

"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
- Sir Francis Bacon
“Maybe,” she said, only faintly hopeful at best that her friend, the loon, might possibly miss her. She was perhaps, far too distracted by the scent and strength of him, thinking about how utterly akin to sunlight he was - warm, unbelievably so, and always managed to brighten her days. Part of her wanted to tell him how much she has missed him, and with the loon gone, she had thought the lake unbearable to be around for all the memories it held in the gentle lap of its waves against the lakeshore. But his words caught at her ears and she raised her head to regard the lake for a moment, smiling in a quiet way, finding that believable - the loon missing her more than she missed him, and that eased some of the pain she experienced.

Beside him, her gaze focused on the water that bathed their feet with cool tongues and it dawned on her that the tides seemed unnaturally compelled. Her eyes slide to his for a moment, secretive and smiling, and knew that nothing need be said. He had found his element or it had found him, though she grew curious, seemed to burn with the want of knowing what it was like to find a part of you that had been missing and knowing that you hadn’t always known it wasn’t there. She had been born to hers, and from the beginning, had known nothing but the pleasure of it. Michabou almost asked him what it was like to suddenly find it, to know it, to exert subtle influence over it but his question - his gaze - caught her off guard.

“Slow. I want to progress, to learn, to make my mother proud of me.” this last bit she said subdued, her eyes sliding from his to the reeds that bent towards the lake, tall and crooked in their precarious stance between sky and earth and water, much as she felt - precariously balanced, poised on the edge of something but not knowing just what that edge was or if she would fall. But she smiled and rolled her eyes from the reeds to him, “How goes the battlefield? I hear you’ve made general here.” and she felt a fierce pride for him, for his accomplishments, and it swelled in her.