She hadn’t even thought twice about the rightness of his absence. Her own presence was so little needed beyond the singular experience of becoming de facto mother to Carbon that she thinks fondly on those times that Cain had even seen her from afar and given the briefest of nods. It had been enough for one so accustomed to distance in members of a herd - especially as she was an interloper and chosen for convenience rather than for passion.
She didn’t feel slighted, and even now as he talks with her so casually, she is grateful for the attentions his replies offer. He listens, he responds, and that is enough. She feels tangible for the first time since her birth, seen and real, with even just that polite conversation.
Their mutual children were mutual by choice, by heart though not by body. Perhaps that is why this usually quite stoic mare has taken a twinge of interest in her well-being and dared to hope. Her request, though, seems to have been thinly veiled at best -- if the coy grin was to be judged as a hint when combined with the mischief in his eyes. His head tosses in the direction to go and she falls in beside him with ease.
It is not her talent, this flirtation that she had set out to take a risk on this day. She is as we said, a stoic creature by nature. Her worthiness in beauty always having been in question, it is hardly difficult to see the efforts she has put in. Her coat is wet, though not by sea water. Her mane was thoughtfully groomed by her firstborn, embarrassed to ask Carbon for help in wooing his father. Vulcan had understood at least enough that his mother desired to be loved again and though he had called Carbon over in the midst of his efforts - she prays he did not disclose the foolish venture entirely.
She is broad in the same sense that Cain is broad, but she has lithe legs and feet by comparison. It makes her feel strangely small when she is close enough to sweep barrel against barrel with him. She catches him once sneaking a glance at her, but she does her best to appear as though she has not noticed - for all that perhaps she had indeed tried to tidy her gait ever so slightly. Her head high, her steps lightened with thoughtfulness, he sees confidence in her because she knows she must try to be so.
Confident with childbearing, with childrearing -- but this was a world she was not accustomed to. She was not ready to prance, to swish her tail in snaps and whirls, to crane her neck and nicker in that high and sweet tone some mares could. Not that she was not willing to do the circus proud, only that she was not sure she could - that there was any hope to make her thickened and winter-bred body behave as she’d seen the desert-bred horses do since her arrival from over in the dunes.
The cave entrance gives her no such hesitation as would require him to wait for long - though she does reach her nose up to look at the mouth as she passed into it, his side guiding her by her own shoulder so she did not stumble while she admired nature’s handiwork. The sudden wash of cool air that seems to whip up and out at them makes her gasp in, eyes wide with surprise and sudden relief for her poor mostly-black hide. Her body shudders till she shakes from topline to toe with such a satisfied sigh that one might think her sunk into a cool lake.
For the first time since she’d nervously petitioned him where she’d found him, her neck allows her head to hang at comfortable half-mast. "This must be the finest treasure in all of your fine Desert," she says in a voice full of wistful appreciation and relief, "truly." Her black forelock hangs in her eyes and she rests the side of her face into his flank where she stops to fully immerse in the sensation of coolness that makes her succumb.
His scent is the first thing that revives her, the sudden realization that she has taken such a liberty leaving her off-balance enough to bring her head full-erect again, and her eyes to snap dutifully not-at-him to admire the general splendor. "What are these cave formations called? I have never seen their like where I am from."