Katla, prone to reverie and lost in thoughts of her sweetest memories, hadn’t seen the stallion. Nor had she smelled him on the wind, for her lungs were filled with the sweet scent of summer grass. That, too, had been a memory. The air around them now is bitter cold and holds the promise of an overnight frost to come, her breath puffing out in little white clouds. His voice cuts through her imagination and she feels the cold now, filtering in through her skin and rooting in her bones, startling her as much as the sudden sound of his voice. Her footfalls slow as she swings her head around to where the stranger’s voice still echoes, her brown eyes scrutinizing the dark by the pale glow of moonlight.
They find him in the folds of shadow, drawn up and staring blankly in her direction. Surprise and confusion war inside of her and she watches him quietly for a moment, with nothing but the sharp wind snapping at her tail to indicate movement. Still, the stallion makes no indication that he notices her here, watching. Waiting.
Finally, she breaks free of the trance of curious confusion, clearing her throat and stepping closer, a jovial prance in her step. How long had it
been since she’d encountered another in her travels? Too long, for she is a social creature, and the weeks of solitude had been terribly, dreadfully dull.
”Hello,” she pipes back cheerily, stopping a few feet from him and prancing in place to quell her excitement.
”Are you from here? I’m not. I’m on an adventure,.” Her voices pitches low in a whisper on the word ‘adventure,’ as if it is some great secret and she can’t risk being found out by eavesdroppers.
”My name’s Katla. Would you like to come adventuring with me? It’s been awful without someone to talk to, and I really don’t know where I’m going.”
She’s friendly, too talkative, but her veins hum with excited electricity as she eyes the stallion, who she’d begun to suspect to be quite blind. What could it hurt, inviting him along? He probably knows more about this place than she does, and if not, why shouldn’t they discover it together? Vaguely, she wonders if she should be afraid of him, a stranger lurking in the dark, but that thought is dashed away rather quickly, replaced once more by the excitement of having
found him.
And anyways, she’d been lurking in the dark, same as him.