Common

Isla had barely finished comforting Kerr when the sound of another's approach drew her gaze away from her young son, and she oriented toward the figure warily. As much as the roan mare believed in the general goodness of the world, she was not oblivious to its dangers. Even if she had been inclined toward naivete, her mother's frantic warnings of what rogue stallions could (and would) do to her and her son were impossible to ignore. Grier had breathed nightmares of stallions that killed outside colts into her ear to accentuate the other crimes a man might commit against a woman, and Isla had not slept soundly since.

She stepped protectively before her son, tucking his robust little figure behind her shoulder and out of the oncoming equine's immediate reach, but she did not make to flee. Isla had brought them here with a purpose, and running from the exact thing she had come here to seek would serve neither of them.

To her surprise, it was not a band stallion that approached, but a mare that carried herself with the same authority. She braced herself for the land's equivalent of a claiming nip - a barbaric practice that she still did not understand despite its relatively widespread prevalence - and watched the painted mare speculatively when it did not come.

"Aye?" Isla asked neutrally with the equivalent of a brow raise at the mare's assertation, her tail flicking idly against her hocks. There was something about the mare swooping in to chastise Isla about how dangerous it was to wander these parts that had gotten just underneath her skin, reminding her poignantly of her mother in a way that was viscerally unpleasant, given the recent and raw parting of her company. "Ye know of our quest, d'ye? Or d'ye mean tae say it's you who'll be putting our quest tae an end?"

The dun roan wasn't quite sure what to make of the other mare's demeanor. One moment she was sweet, the next she was a snake in the grass, head swaying with each movement her prey made, just waiting for an opportunity to strike. The latter was a subtle thing, found only in the way her eyes seemed to follow each subtle shift of Isla's body as if waiting for a reason to force her hand... the sort of behavior Isla would expect to see in a creature that utilized marks of claiming, which she had not. It was a confusing mix that only heightened the visceral feeling that Isla had made a mistake bringing Kerr here.

"Isla," she answered briefly when the mare asked, and then tipped her head sideways to indicate the child at her hip. "And my wee lad, Kerr." As his name was given, Kerr peeked up from beneath his mother's chest but remained silent, his typical confidence quelled by his mother's atypical uneasiness. "Where is it yer from, Enya?"