NYMERIA
She stood tall and still, dark eyes flitting expectantly from one individual to another. Then a gentle call pulled her attention to a petite little mare, mahogany brown with a bold white blanket on her back. Nymeria stiffened with suspicion as the stranger cut through the yellow grass towards her, side-eyeing that blanket as if it were a gaping white mouth come to devour her. But there were no spots dappling it that she could see; it was as clean and white as a crisp layer of new snow. Her nostrils fluttered with a heavy sigh. Pull yourself together. Nothing ages a horse more than paranoia.
The stranger stopped a distance from her – presumably either out of deference or caution – and spoke, introducing herself. Nymeria had long since become used to the way the islanders gave their names as freely as they breathed. Once she had found it foolish and tiresome and had fought against the convention, refusing to give her own until she found that she trusted the individual as her kin, but now she found it more tiresome to pointlessly cling to a tradition that had no bearing here. Names here were not used as weapons, as they were in her homeland; therefore, she was quite content to at least give her name (no matter how much she still disliked smalltalk).
“I am Nymeria," she responded, her voice low, throatly, and still faintly accented after all these years. She stepped forward to bridge the small distance between them and extended her muscled neck, offering her nose in the old-fashioned way of greeting. “You are new here,” she observed, having caught a salty whiff of the sea emanating from Hallowed’s dark skin. “As am I.”
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