I love you more in my head
but I’ll love you better when I’m dead
⬡ ⬡ ⬡
There is a moment of apprehension when Naydra grows close - perhaps too close - to the arabian mare. The taller woman feels the mild tension of someone still on the fence as to whether or not they should flee a situation, or stay and see where it goes; not exactly fear, but an assessment of risk.
She stays.
You're certainly comfortable with strangers, the grey mare says. This prompts Naydra to laugh, not unkindly. “There is a time and a place for introversion,” she says, “but I rarely stumble across either of them.” You don't get a goddamn thing in this life unless you go out there and take it, is what she really wants to say, but there is a time and place for that as well. No one wants to hear the bitter lecturing of a filly who's only evolution from her approval-seeking youth is an adulthood of unhinged, unbridled ambition. At least, not as an introductory conversation.
“Lourdes,” she repeats, her tail swaying idly at her heels, the ends dragging through the damp snow with a depressing sigh. “I am Naydra. I hope you will accompany me out of this wretched place; I won't presume to claim my home is any warmer, but it is at least sheltered from the wind.”
And the sunlight, mostly, she thinks, but she keeps quiet once again. Having grown up in the suffocating heat of Atlantis, Naydra does not love the cold, but she is endeared to most things that are the opposite of her childhood home. The Thicket is dark and labyrinthine, safe from prying eyes and appetites. It does not have to be balmy in order to suit Naydra, and suit her it does. A little cold won't get in her way.
“Where do you come from, Lourdes?” she asks, eyeing the little grey mare at her side. She would rather not spend the day on the Crossing making small talk, but the Marwari mare is not inclined to go breaking new toys right after acquiring them, and Lourdes does not (that she can tell, anyway) look ready for another swim. Naydra can be patient, when she feels like it, so she cocks a hind hoof and allows her body heat to thaw the arabian mare beside her.
Naydra
mare. 16hh. silver black. rougaru x visurix.
