Þoka’s eyes narrow as the mare contradicts her and then makes the most outrageous claim she’s ever heard. “No way,” the blue mare says, shaking her head, unable to see (or, more likely, oblivious to) the other mare’s pinned ears. “You think I’m gonna believe that? That there’s more like you? Ha,” she scoffs, then shudders. Big behemoths like her clomping around somewhere? A whole herd of them? Þoka feels goosebumps race across her body and shakes herself out. “Horrifying!”
The surf washes over her hooves and she stamps the water before picking her way up the sand and out of reach of the tide, keeping the big black mare in her direct line of sight. She has never hated anything as much as she hates the ocean, and she rides that rage as she continues to gibe the much larger mare. “I’m not going to talk pretty to someone just to make them feel better,” she snaps. “I call it like I see it with everyone.” It’s the only way to live life. Her father taught her that. He didn’t mean for it to be a lesson—not for this daughter of his, at least—but Þoka picked it up right quick when he showed a side of himself she’d never seen before. She hadn’t even dreamed such viciousness might lurk within him. But there it was one day, laid out for all the world to see before he tamped it back down and went on like nothing had even happened.
Þoka learned from him that a dragon lies curled within the heart of every creature, and it’s only a matter of stoking its fires with the right fuel to get it to show. She’d rather see the dragon up front than discover it later, and so she flaunts her own shamelessly. Everyone who meets Þoka knows exactly what they’re getting right from the start. “Hel, I’ve never seen someone so tall. You sure there isn’t another horse in there with you?” |