Truthfully, in her eagerness to finally be free and wandering on her own, she has not noticed anyone around her. Her parents’ fears of her oblivious nature had been precisely accurate, but Callow would never know that (at least not yet). She prances, flirts with the waves with dainty hooves and quiet whinnies, dancing with the waves and skipping over the little crabs brave enough to break the surface of the sand. She is every part of the foolish schoolgirl in her pretty yellow dress left to wander alone while licking a fresh lemon-pop and holding on to her too-floppy sun hat.
It’s no wonder that she is too distracted by the freedom that she doesn’t see the ashy-painted stallion ahead of her. But finally her grayish eyes rise and she stops as if in alarm, legs locked and with a nearly cartoonish snort as she cocks her head, she lets out a short laugh as she asks who he is.
Perhaps her sassiness is a remnant of her unsatisfied heat; perhaps she is just too young to have realized what he is after; perhaps she truly is just too much of a child to see such a tall stallion in her path upon the beach. She looks up and there he is so suddenly that she halts, her joints locking in place with a small splash as she gasps. The splashes of water look like gold in this lie; the frothy foam would seem juvenile if not for her abrupt stamp. She has to pause, snorting out the bad air which stings at her nostrils before she asks her initial question.
The taller stallion answers so smoothly, so simply, that it nearly sounds like chocolate or molasses to her ears (sweet, soft, supple...) She tilts her head opposite to his own, hesitant as he reaches to exchange breaths. This is her first interaction with a stranger and although she understands this exchange, it feels oddly intimate. It leaves her a little wide-eyed and breathless again.
“I-I’m Callow,” she eventually manages to stammer out, abruptly devoid of the prideful confidence she’d held to escape from her parents. She looks toward the ocean’s breeze and it greets her, brushing her forelock back like a missing caretaker. She looks back toward the stallion with a coquettish smile. “No, I don’t mind,” she says, although she too glances toward the trees as well, uncertain of who else may have spotted her.
“I’m not sure I should be called a dancer,” she continues. She keeps a notable distance between herself and the larger stallion, seeming both shy and polite while perhaps a little unfamiliar of the etiquette. Still, she glances up at him when she speaks and admires his muscles from the corner of her eye. “May I call you ‘mighty warrior’?” she states as a rebuke to his observation. She laughs lightly. “'The Cove' you say? Do you come to beaches often, then? Perhaps to save damsels like myself from such manners of distress?”
She laughs airily again before dipping her muzzle toward the slushy rising tide as she prances merrily through it and shuddering her shoulders beneath the sunrise that gilds them both. Tiny crabs seem to scramble away from her hooves knowingly while the seafoam seems to know better than to touch her.
CALLOW
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