"Yes, I’m sure," Calfuray was quick to say in response to the larger stallion. Her gold-dusted ears turn back in uncertainty though, as he speaks again - because she’s not sure about anything really, about who this stallion is, or why Orphiel is here now, or what she was thinking, coming here. For all her claiming to herself that she didn’t know what she wanted - it wasn’t true. Everyone knew what they wanted, whether it be something simple, like a place to rest for the night. And if, for some reason, someone lost sight of what they wanted, surely they still remembered what they didn’t want.
Calfuray could hold fast to that. She didn’t want to be alone anymore.
As for what she wanted?
"Orphiel," Calfuray said softly, her voice pitching a little higher as she turned her ears back in apprehension of how the stranger would react to the younger stallion’s bluntness. She wanted the both of them to get out of this mess she’d unwittingly dragged him into, unscathed. And after that? The gold-grey mare would figure that out along the way.
Turning her head to look at the dark-coated stallion, who’d slipped so easily into her space, Calfuray felt her pulse quicken, and the breath she drew caught in her throat. Since childhood, Kolfinna had made sure that she was safe, protected in the valley shadowed by the Peak. And even when she’d finally broken free from that security, she’d kept largely to herself in the Prairie. If there was one thing Calfuray could claim to know about Zevulun, it was that he was kind and caring, and she had felt safe in the Prairie too, for he’d allowed none in his herd that were the sort to sidle up to young mares who had little clue about romance, or the power that individuals could come to wield over one another. Internally, she was panicking, because she didn’t have any idea how to respond to the silver bay’s advances.
It was Kalanthia who’d been the starry eyed dreamer, not her. Calfuray’s job had been to look after her siblings, and she’d failed at that. Faline had disappeared one day, and not long after that, Kolfinna had taken Kalanthia away to Tinuvel. It had just been her and Saul, then, and not even his pleas to stay could keep her from going looking for Faline. And somehow, she’d made her way to the Prairie, but the one she’d been seeking was nowhere to be found. Even Saul was gone from the valley now. Her little, broken family, scattered to the winds.
Orphiel’s voice drew her out of herself again, and she blinked, dipping her dusty grey muzzle in acknowledgement of his words. In that simple gesture, she had made her decision. Only time would tell if it would prove to be the right one. "Thank you, but…" Her voice trailed off, and she turned aside from Orphiel to look to the older stallion. "I don’t need any help." The words were offered softly, in the hopes of not offending the stallion, whom she discerned was far more experienced than she.
"I want to stay with him," she murmurs, her warm brown eyes settled on Orphiel’s face. For the longest time, that was all she had wanted (a childish fantasy, in all honesty), but there was no way of knowing if he would want her around, after all this. There must’ve been a reason why he left his family in the Prairie to live amongst the bachelors in the Lagoon. For a moment more, she holds the dun stallion’s gaze, silently praying that he’d hold to what he’d said and just go along with it, if only so the other stallion, whose name she still didn’t know, left without argument.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. Truth was, she was just unaccustomed to the kind of attention he’d lavished upon her, and she didn’t know what to do in the face of it, much less what his real intentions were, if Orphiel’s accusation was to be believed. More than anything, Calfuray wanted to believe that the Prairie boy she’d met all that time ago was still somewhere in there, and if Calfuray believed in anything, it was him.
She didn’t know what had happened to cause Orphiel to leave his kin for a place like the Lagoon - during her time in the Prairie, she hadn’t felt it her place to ask Zevulun, and Raziel had been largely scarce, and distant the few brief times Calfuray had caught sight of him awake in the twilight hours. He seemed to like his own company, and so, the greying girl hadn’t ever approached him.
Perhaps, once it was just her and Ophiel, she’d muster up the courage to ask him.
Taking a bold step forward, away from the silver-haired stallion, she circled to stand beside the Lagoon bachelor, settling her shoulder just behind his. At least if they pretended they were united, like she was going with him, like he wanted her to go with him… Calfuray might be granted a little more time and space to figure out what she wanted beyond this - beyond finally being in Orphiel’s orbit again.
And if it turned out that the cremello stallion was just doing this because he was driven to, by some moral sense, rather than actually caring about her and what happened to her… Well, she’d hold her chin high, just as she did now, assuming an air of confidence that she had no true claim on, in the hopes of convincing her mysterious suitor to seek company elsewhere, and pray that she could hold all the pieces of herself together until after Orphiel left too, so when she fell apart, no-one would be there to see.
And then Calfuray could take her own sweet time figuring out which parts of herself and her hopes and her dreams (and childhood fantasies) were worth keeping.
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