a new world hangs outside the window
beautiful and strange
it must be I've fallen awake
I must be

Wasp was careful to gauge the stallion's stony exterior as she approached, noting the way he snorted and pinned his ears as she got closer. She settled into a relaxed position a few feet away, where the slab of rock underneath her was mostly flat, and she could cock her hip high on one end and fold an ankle to rest. The dark mare breathed a heavy sigh then, allowing her head to rest lower than usual - in line with her withers and chest - to show an usually casual demeanor that was reserved for very few in her small inner circle.

The Peak mare's tail bat back and forth, though gently, as she mulled over what to say next. She scoffed a laugh at Ivar's quick comeback to her earlier observation, and bobbed her head as if to say Touché. "You'll be stronger because of it." She offered, sort of as a bittersweet way to look at it. "By the time you get back to the Lagoon." Wasp wasn't stupid. She knew she couldn't keep Ivar here forever. Nor did she really want to. He was a ploy, of course, a bargaining chip. A way to hold something over Cullen's head. But she realized the stallion had his own wants and desires and feelings. This period was always meant to be temporary.

"I just... wanted to see how you are doing, is all." She offered, her dark brown ear lobes swiveling forward and back atop her skull. A long silence spans between them. Wasp's amber eyes flit out over the landscape, following the cry of a vulture as it took flight from a higher boulder. She watches it swoop low over the valley below before turning back to the stallion.

"So where did you learn to fight like that?" She asks, thinking back to their original scuffle. Ivar was clearly skilled. His training must have come from somewhere beyond the Lagoon.

W A S P