Reef has not yet had reason to mistrust anyone, and so she reacts to the stallion's presence with unself-conscious delight and not a drop of fear. There is confidence in her own competency to take care of herself, likely through flight, but no notion that violence or retreat might be necessary here. She thinks only of islands, and the treasures sure to be lurking on each, horse or otherwise. And his smiles, small and shortlived at first but gaining breadth, only further Reef's belief that everyone she meets is as friendly as she.
"Shortcut?" she repeats as they pause, and matches him grin for grin while catching her breath. "Hopefully more downhill than up." This place is too much incline, too many trees. Like an ocean, dry, and they traversing between the roots of strange seaweed stretching up toward that blue, blue sky. She likes to imagine this is what it must be like to walk the oceanfloor, but of course she will never truly know. Her eyes dart to the shrubbery and rocks tumbled about their feet, wondering what sorts of critters lay hiding in and under the dark— what 'crabs' scuttle on dry land, sleek without the sea smoothing down their hides?
Her head snaps up, eyes focus again on the stallion, Jabari, aware she is toeing the line of being rude. "Lead on," she says, and waits to fall into step a little behind his shoulder, intending to stay parallel and not behind whenever this crowded trail might allow. She becomes aware of the air, then, wet and heavy in her lungs. Maybe this place is more ocean than not, after all.
"What are storms like, here?" she asks as she follows him, trying to take it all in with every stride, amazed at the riot of colors peppering the greenery and the loud, hollow calls of —birds?— in the jungle above them. "The rocks, they must be hit to bits over time, making all those pebbles down on the beach." Reef doesn't know. It seems a logical guess, and perhaps a better option than the fairytales she was told as a child, that the mermaids dropped their pearls and this beach is where they've all been collected by the jealous sea. |