Common

She likes to think she notices him before he notices her. She watches him as he appraises them, gleaning her pleasure from the moment his want of her spurs his feet into motion. A part of her had feared that she was undesirable, as it always did after carrying a child. One of these days she would be too old and used to warrant the attention she so enjoyed now.

Vanya's gaze rests on him as he approaches, studying the way he appraises her. She knows her best angles by virtue of studying such reactions and shifts so that he might take in her beauty in the same way that she does his own. He is a fine piece of horseflesh, with a face subtly dished like her own, but a body that was far more masculine than hers. Where she was waif-like and elegant, a creature of fine lines built for dancing, he looked as though he could take on any sport the world threw at him. Vivienne sees him too, and moves to mimic her mother, stepping forward to sidle along her side with a pretty smile.

As he draws closer, she raises her head to meet him with a smile that plays a the edges of her lips. A part of her cannot help but draw comparisons from this interaction in the Commons to her last one, when Rougaru had forced her home to Paradise with hardly more than a hello first. As much as she enjoyed playing rough, it was refreshing to be treated like a lady rather than a possession and she warmed to the dark stallion more easily than she necessarily should.

At his opening line, Vanya chuckled softly, the sound rumbling pleasantly through her chest. It had been nearly a year now since she'd last shared a pleasant conversation with the opposite gender, and even then she had rudely aborted the last discussion as soon as reality had kicked in. Flaunting a relationship with a new stallion while her heat had not yet been smothered entirely by Rougaru's attentions had been foolish and risky. Not that Kamekaze hadn't intrigued her. He wasn't a territory holder, and as such, shouldn't be worth her time… but then again, the thought of someone who might cherish her and only her had begun to gain traction against her want of power.

Her depthless brown eyes twinkle as he arrives, eager to see what he is made of. "Do I?" Her pleasure at his arrival is reflected in the tone she uses, and she cannot help but openly appraise him with a slow spreading grin.

Her cat-in-the-cream smile only deepens as he continues to behave like a gentleman, dipping his handsome face in greeting, but Vanya does not yet respond. As if summoned by her thoughts, the very painted buckskin stallion she had been thinking of materializes from the trees around the Crossing and walks hastily in their direction. It surprises her to see him here, and she wonders if his life had drastically changed. Had he become a landowner himself? Or been given rights to claim mares?

Either way, it pleases her to see him. Not necessarily because she'd missed him, although she had often wondered what life would have been like if she'd simply absconded with him then. No, Vanya was glad to see him purely because it would only up the stakes. If they both had to work harder to earn her favor to displace the other, it would only inherently increase her own value.

And if nothing else, Vanya wanted to be seen as highly valued.

As Kamekaze approaches, she favors Balor with what remains of her solo attention with a faux bashful dip of her gaze before she replies. "My name is Vanya," gently she stretches forward to trail her teacup muzzle down the fuzzy strands of her daughter's mane. Beneath her dam's touch, Vivienne preens, stretching to brush her mother's leg. For her, her dam's affection was fleeting, and when it came, it was often paired with rough and dismissive words. From it, she had learned that love was often rough and disguised by other emotions that still seemed too large for her at just a few months old. Too young to see her mother's manipulation for what it was, Vivi's gaze is adoring and grateful as she looks up at her mother, a grin on her pink lips.

"And this," Vanya says, raising her gaze to meet Balor's again, "is Vivienne."

In the presence of two virile, interested stallions, her hormones run amuck. As a filly, when she had played these games with the boys, it had always been easy to pull back and save that part of herself from them. At the time, Vanya had always believed that the only time she would allow a stallion to cover her would be when it was to her benefit. A child for a position of power and the like. The matter of her heat had seemed trivial to deal with then; merely a minor inconvenience that worked in her favor more often than not.

But Vanya was no nubile virgin anymore. She knew what it was to engage in such carnal satisfaction and she couldn't help but wonder what it might feel like for either of these stallions to take her beneath them. Would it be as it had with Rougaru? Or would they be as gentle as their greetings suggested? It was not as though she wanted another child. In truth, she had not wanted either of her children so far. Drogon had been conceived in a moment of ill-gotten passion and apart from the pride that blossomed in her chest each time she looked at him, she had gained nothing from his creation. As for Vivienne, the fruits of her unplanned and unwanted arrival had yet to bear fruit, although they were still growing steadily on the vine.

Flicking the length of her ebony tail and with it the lure of her own body, Vanya allowed her attention to fall favorably onto the loudly painted stallion with a small dip of her dished face. "Kamekaze," she said gently in greeting, her fluted ears pressing forward to catch his statement. She could brush off his subtle dig at Rougaru, but it occurs to her that she can simply use the same modified version of the truth that she had in the Peak. After all, neither of these two stallions were there to see her bait Rougaru into taking her beneath him.

Vanya allows her gaze to fall swiftly to the ground, and her demeanor to darken. With the ease of a practiced actress, her tail falls from it's proud position away from her body and her ears tilt back as if in shame and uncertainty. She doubted that they would ask the reason for such a sudden change, but she hoped it would do enough for her 'girl in need of swift rescue' image to appease their curiosity. Drawing her brows together as if conflicted in emotion, she raises her gaze to the filly with a bittersweet grin that does not last long on her lips.

"No." Without raising her gaze again, Vanya gives a small shake of her head as she whispers the single syllable. Some of the expression that colors her voice is genuine, although the source of her dismay differs from that which she portrays. "The Peak rescued me before she was born." In time she would tell her chosen stallion of the danger she was placing them in, but for now, she hoped to keep them from the subject of her daughter's father by her demeanor and choice of words. It wouldn't do to intimidate them in the first five seconds of having their attention all to herself.

Combining a press of her lips and a brow that creases momentarily, Vanya lifts her gaze back to the stallions again and shakes her head again as if to quell unwelcome thoughts. "Enough about me, and tell me more of yourself. Are you still in the Badlands? Have you come to call it your own then?"

Not eager to let Balor become discouraged, she turns her attention back to his with the same sweet smile she had worn at the start. "And you, Balor. Where is it you come from?"

With her heart thrumming in her chest with the excitement of once again being the object of attention between two virile stallions, Vanya allowed her neck to arch prettily as she waited, her gaze dancing between the two of them. There was yet a chance that more would come, but she wasn't holding out hope for such things. Even having two stallions to herself was a far cry more than what she had enjoyed in the last few years.