She liked him, Lucille realized abruptly while Ghoul was speaking of his recent successes. Her father had never considered the possibility of losing around her, and that difference was surprisingly pleasant to realize.
Besides, his promise not to break on her was so earnestly made that she had to believe him.
"I don't know!" Lucille exclaimed with an angry stomp of a front hoof. "I hadn't even done anything to deserve it this time, either! I mean, him getting mad made sense all the times we played pranks on him, but this time we didn't do anything! Honest!" A pause. "He always blames me for everything, anyway..." she grumbled, all but pouting. Though she would only grudgingly admit it, Lucille was already suffering from homesickness; complaining about her father helped, but only a little bit.
Mostly it just made her stomach clench so tight that she was starting to feel kind of sick. "I don't want to talk about him anymore," Lucille decided suddenly, and with a snotty toss of her head. Her mane flopped out of her eyes, only to slide right back into place. She snorted at it crossly.
"So where do you graze and stuff?" There was a bit of plainitiveness in the question; it wasn't the sort of thing Lucille would have asked a stallion had a sensible mare been around, but at the moment Ghoul was her only choice. "And don't say around here," she warned primly. Oh, there was nothing wrong with the grass on the outskirts, but it felt tacky to be grazing there when it was so obviously where the outsiders went. "I only know the places where daddy takes his herd, and I don't wanna go there."
Or she did - of course she did, just to see her mother and younger sister one last time - but Lucille couldn't go back. Especially not with a strange stallion on her proverbial arm!
