Valentina might be young, but she's not naive: she knows exactly what this is.

She'd seen this song and dance before: you get mad when you're hurt - due to your own fault or someone else's, it didn't seem to matter - and seek solace from your other boytoy to make the first one jealous. It was a way to twist the narrative, to drain the anger out of her system and rise above the consequences, and it really seemed to work for Switch, so why wouldn't it work for her? She truly did need to rest, and out of her two and a half years of life, she'd only spent the first six months of it on Atlantis (In the shore, at that). Sure, she could possibly follow the river back the way she came, and it might lead her to the "new home" she'd absentmindedly walked right out of, but the canopy overhead blocks so much of the sun it feels a bit like twilight. How is she supposed to figure out where to go if she doesn't even know where she is? Isn't there safety in numbers? Won't her stallion be so pissed when she comes back covered in another man's scent? He'll have to rub it all off, immediately -

Something shifts in her peripheral vision, dragging her back into the present, and her gently-curved ears swivel forward just in time to catch his murmured summons. She steps into her part with ease, bowing her head so that some of the thick, damp strands of her mane fall modestly forward. "Thank you," she says, "that sounds nice," following alongside just close enough to flick the ends of her tail across his toned hindquarters - in completely random intervals, of course - but never enough to touch. Never mind that most of her experience with boys was with her bajillion half-brothers, that this was only her second true encounter with a non-related one, or that her first had kind of sucked. She's keeping the mystery alive, not keeping a manageable distance apart. She's not trying to keep her heart from beating out of her chest. Everything's fine. They reach the pool, the incline is sharp, and the water is colder than she expects it to be. Valentina tries to stay upright, but the initial shock of such a steep temperature change causes her to flinch and lose her footing, and suddenly she's nestled up against him.

Everything is definitely not fine.

"Easy now," he says, his voice echoing into the spaces between her ribs. "I don't think it's possible to drown in here, but you don't need to prove me wrong." Tina snickers, pretending the shakiness of it is from exhaustion and not the press of his body against hers, and lowers her breathy voice as she replies, hoping to draw him in closer. "No promises, amorcito."

She wades in, lifting her pale chin towards the curtain of water and closing her eyes as they pass beneath. When it washes over her, she sighs, smiling without even meaning to. It just feels so nice to rinse off the previous day's salt and dirt and sweat, sloughing off layers and layers of filth until all the marks are buffed away, erasing the painful memories alongside them. The mare emerges on the other side of the waterfall with her long tresses slicked down to her skin, feeling both rejuvenated and serene, and when she has finished blinking the water from her dark eyelashes so that she can see properly, she tosses her head, sending droplets flying out in all directions and following it with a laugh.

Valentina plays at splashing around, if he wants, but at the first lull in the action she pauses, drawing her small form away and inward, muzzle skimming across the surface of the water as she tucks it close. "I feel so much better already," she says, her expression shifting quickly from flirty to bashful, "but... I'm sorry... I want to thank you, but I don't even know your name." She is innocence incarnate in this moment, apologetic and searching for reassurance, and she follows her lines to the letter, seamlessly teeing up her partner for their next scene. This is, after all, an act she doesn't need to rehearse.