Common

Each breath was a stabbing reminder of my overnight ordeal and I did my best to minimize the outward clues I was giving to my condition. Standing still helped, but it made me feel like a piece of meat on display. The longer I looked around me, the more it became evident that this was a flesh market of a sort, although judging from the pleasant manners and self-effacing smiles, it was a far more subdued one than I had ever frequented.

Having no particular desire to become anyone's property - even if it came with a pretty umbrella of protection to hide my from my pursuer's - I simply decided that I would be the one to do the approaching. I had no home to take anyone to, nor any friends to whom I may trade any acquaintances I did make, but I figured I may as well get started. The rest of it would come later. And even if it didn't, there was always some pleasure to be had in pushing someone where they didn't particularly want to go.

And that notion persisted right up until I took two rather confident steps forward and grimaced again at the soreness of my ribs. Perhaps pushing was not yet in the cards.

I paused to consider my options and was immediately distracted by the arrival of another, and I turned to stare at them coldly as they meandered forward. I lacked the energy to tense preemptively for an attack, but it hardly seemed to matter. The younger golden stallion seemed all but cowed by my appearance alone, which was enough to allow some life to sparkle back into my dark eyes. Perhaps he could be of use to me, although how remained to be seen. Stallions were a dime a dozen where I was from, and young idealistic ones even more so. Had he been just a few years younger I might have been able to fetch a pretty prize for him, but such thoughts were for later. I had no sources to offload him yet, but perhaps I could win his favor.

I didn't particularly like the idea of a male friend lingering about, but if it meant that I could sleep soundly at night while I healed then… perhaps he could be useful after all.

I let the boy speak while I stared, my face stony and emotionless as I decided what I was going to do about him. Kindness had never been my forte, nor had gentleness or coaxing. If it were up to me, I'd simply set about beating the boy into submission until he agreed to serve me, but my body was hardly up to such a task. Subduing the sneer from my lips, I break to speak, my voice gravelly from the dual ordeals of the raid and the ocean salt it had swallowed.

"Do I look badly hurt?" The words were a challenge and I did not drop my gaze from the well-meaning boy. I knew that I was bedraggled and beaten - my body worse scars like patchwork on the best of days, and today those old marks were overlaid with fresh ones. Hell, I couldn't even take a full breath without wincing at the pain that lanced through my sides and I knew the outward evidence was equally mangled. Jagged vertical scrapes lined both sides of my ribs from where the undertow had dragged me across the ground and my left hind fetlock was swollen from heaven only knew what. A grotesque flap of skin hung from a lacerated shoulder and a half-healed gash decorated a hip.

I trace the contours of his body slowly as I studied him, my face cold. This boy did not carry himself as a man yet, and so I did not consider him one. As my gaze completes its glacial circuit, I return to his face with a subtle tilt of my head. "What help can you offer?"

Flaxen Liver Chestnut Overo . loveinspired