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It had started simple enough. Lorenna had received an urgent message along her bird network about a matter that desperately needed her attention. She had departed immediately with the cerynei twins in tow. After a long trip she had finally made it to the set meeting place, left the twins off somewhere to play, as usual, and gone to discuss the trouble at hand. Everything had become infinitely more complicated the instant she spotted a certain purple maned menace standing where she was supposed to be meeting her contact.

She now stood face to face with Xelloss, or, more appropriately, face to shoulder, barely restraining her fury. Lorenna knew what her odds of winning a fight with Xelloss were and they weren't good. It was far wiser to speak with him rather than attack, or even flee. She could not leave the twins with Xelloss so close and they stood no chance of out running the kalona. She hoped this was all some coincidence, she doubted it, but she hoped it all the same.

"Xelloss." She said as calmly as she could though there was a certain tenseness in her voice and jaw. "Do I even want to know what it is that brings you all the way out here today?"

Lorenna met his smirk with a sneer. "I've never known you to visit without reason. Even when you were just stopping by to visit that treacherous little snake you ran off with you had reasons." Othelia's betrayal still burned Lorenna. She had expected something like that from the beginning but somehow, when the day had come, it had still caught her off guard. Thinking of that moment made the pair of scars upon her chest twinge and she shifted her legs as though it would help. It didn't, the feeling was all in her mind.

"Now...your sons...tell me...were they the ones that made that attempt to attack Padmapani? The ones that failed so spectacularly?" She almost regretted that little remark. Lorenna hadn't missed the look on Xelloss's face. A mixture of pride and old habits seemed to be getting the better of her. Silently she reminded herself not to get in over her head. It wasn't just herself she needed to worry about. If Xelloss killed her the twins would be as alone as the day she found them and she did not doubt that Xelloss would kill her if he wanted to.

Trying to steer away from the touchy subject of failure she moved back to her original point. "Now, if you did come here to visit, why? Is there something you wanted?" In the back of her mind she was hoping he wanted a swift kick in the teeth. That was something she would be happy to provide.

Lorenna took in a small breath to help her keep the strength to continuously beat down the sarcastic remarks that were threatening to dig her grave for her. "And what would that be, Xelloss?" She questioned somehow managing to keep her voice steady and mostly kind. There would always be a bit of bite in every word to Xelloss. Until the moon failed to rise and the earth burned under the light of the sun she would hate him and there was no way to remove all of that from her voice. Not even Lorenna was capable of that kind of control.

In all honesty she didn't want to know what he needed. It wasn't going to be good whatever it was. He was a kalona and as far as she was concerned that meant he was the root of all things evil in the world. Evil didn't want good favors. Evil wanted to unleash its horrors on the unsuspecting public.

Lorenna's eyebrow twitched involuntarily. Why had she expected a straight answer from the stallion? He never gave straight answers. He would dance around the point until he felt like giving it. Lorenna had always hated that about him among a long list of others things that made her skin crawl. The creepy smile. His stupid hair. His annoying voice. The fact that he was a kalona. All of it bothered her to no end.

"Xelloss, I do not for one instant believe that you came out here just to speak to me and not just because you had no way of knowing I would be here. Now if you would kindly stop this silly little game of yours and get to the point. If you want something from me than just say it." Lorenna had lost her patience. It was hardly an uncommon occurrence. As polite as she could be she simply couldn't stand this tip-toeing.

Lorenna raised her eyebrows while narrowing her eyes at Xelloss. She wasn't sure what he was on about now but there was something about everything that send a lone chill down her spine. How could he know that she would be there? Did he have spies of his own following her? That seemed plausible but the more Xelloss spoke the less secure Lorenna felt with that assumption.

Getting her here was the idea.

If she had felt a chill before now it felt like she had just been plunged into an icy lake. "Xelloss, what have you done?" She demanded full on glaring at him. The message had come from the jungle and if he had done something to get her here that must have meant something had happened to Uwasa. The little kirin mix had been brave to venture into the wild and now it seemed that something terrible had happened to her. Had it been torture? Torture to get her to send a fake message, it wasn't a tactic Lorenna would put past the kalona. "Tell me now!" The icy feeling was quickly being replaced by a burning rage and a growing disgust as she looked upon the kalona.

"More reliable than a kalona!" She spat still glaring at the demon. "What did you do to the girl?" Lorenna's mind was racing too fast to keep up with it. Xelloss had taken over her network, which was a problem in and of itself but this was also clearly a trap. She wasn't exactly sure what the point of this trap was. If it was to kill her he was doing a rather poor job of it. Did he want to humiliate her first, was that it?

All of these thoughts fell into some void when Xelloss continued on. New parent? For barely a second she was confused and then it dawned on her and she snarled. Such a feral expression looked out of place on her features. "Don't you touch them Xelloss! So help me, I will kill you if there so much as one hair missing from them." Her wings were beating so violently that she was beginning to hover off the ground. Xelloss wasn't after her at all, she was going after Fletcher and Thatcher.

"They're just children, Xelloss! They've got nothing to do with any of this." She spoke very quickly and her eyes kept darting off to the side as though she might see their little forms come racing her way, terrified, at any moment. She really was going to kill Xelloss for this. For Uwasa and the twins. She would find a way. She was a flutter, she could go unnoticed. There were many poisonous plants in this world and Xelloss couldn't stay awake all the time. If she lived, he wouldn't.

Lorenna didn't reply, she was to busy seething in anger and trying to think up a way to beat Xelloss to the twins. She wasn't faster than him in air or on land though. He would catch her. She could only hope that Fletcher and Thatcher were not foolhardy enough to try and attack kalona. They should run but she had not raised them. Lorenna barely even knew them, she had no real way of anticipating exactly what they would do. All she knew was that they would do it together.



Lorenna had not seemed particularly happy to be leaving the twins alone but they were far from distraught about it. The two had been the picture of well-behaved youth as Lorenna had left. They stood side by side with relaxed smiles and tails showing no signs of moving. The second that she had vanished from sight Thatcher had sprung forward and up onto a small boulder to ensure that she was, in fact, leaving and not setting some trap to catch them being naughty. He stared off into the distance for a long while with his tail flagged, completely alert. Then, with almost no warning, he leaped off the rock trying to hit Fletcher. Fletcher, well-used to his brother's antics side-stepped him easily and countered with a headbutt. His tiny antlers caught Thatcher's shoulder for a moment before he backed away.

Fletcher pawed at the ground a few times with his head lowered. Thatcher caught the message quickly and bowed his head before bounding forward to crash into his brother's skull. The two pressed against one another for several seconds before backing away in laughter. Thatcher shook himself off lightly as Fletcher looked around. Once Thatcher signaled that he was ready once again they both rammed their heads together. Over and over again they repeated the process until Thatcher's eyes couldn't focus and Fletcher was developing a headache.

It was good play but not something Lorenna ever let them do while she was around. It wasn't that she didn't understand that it was typical behavior for cerynei. Instead it had everything to do with the fact that after a while at least Thatcher would take to tackling Lorenna instead of his brother. Still, they were happy for the chance to rough house even if it meant being left entirely alone again when they had only just gotten used to having constant company.