The young girl’s senses are piqued, her ears flicking every which-way atop her golden crest and her nostrils flaring to the pink with every quiet breath. Her eyes, blue as the ocean on a clear day, are watchful too, wide and shining in the dim, filtered light of the meadow. It’s only because she knows instinctively how to be so still and quiet and how to pay attention to every instant of the environment around her that the young stallion’s appearance does not take her entirely by surprise. Though he had moved quietly, she had heard the gentle hiss of grass parting beneath hooves and had known instantly she was no longer alone.

Like a frightened doe, she doesn’t move a muscle but for her eyes, which flicker curiously to meet his. Her head tucked shyly into her chest, there is only the slightest coil of muscles at the corner of her lips in the ghost of a smile to indicate she has heard him. Brienne silently admires his brightly-colored pelt with its splotches of white melting into red and vice versa; it’s quite evident that he’s older than her, if only by a year or so, but he is, at least, not much taller than her. It’s in small things like that which she takes comfort.

The sudden explosion of snapping twigs, hoof beats, and swaying branches diverts her attention, and she flinches at the unexpected appearance of another young male, having been distracted by the handsome one before her. This one is slightly taller, and from the look of him, she wouldn’t guess that the two of them are brothers. (Neither would she guess that her dam had once met the spotted colt’s mother before either of them had been born, but that is a story for another time.) Brienne waits patiently, trembling slightly, for one of them to notice her deformed face - one can't exactly miss a snout bent sideways where it should be straight as an arrow. Instead there is only awkward silence as rain begins to patter upon their backs from the breaks in the canopy above.