The Forest. Nephilim, at his daughter’s side, tensed. Dished skull lifting quickly, his gold eyes widened. Mariael afforded her father a side-glance, but kept her attention on the shivering, cold, miserably misplaced stallion before her. Nephilim knew Luthien’s Forest well, though his personal experience with its lush vegetation was one tethered to negative memories rather than anything good. Because it was not a beneficial addition to the conversation he kept his lips pressed firmly together, attempting to maintain focus on the situation at hand rather than being pulled into memories of the past.
Mariael respected this stallion more than she had upon their initial meeting. She knew what it meant to love a home, to feel as if one belonged there, the soul as rooted into the ground as the trees themselves. Mariael would stop at nothing to keep the Bay, no matter which aggressor attempted to lay claim to it; she was born of these frigid winds and since her knees were knobby and her hair but a wisp over her neck, she had walked their paths and explored its caves.
As much as she relished a fight and the energy tight in her muscles begged to be relinquished in some way, Mariael paused and thought over what might otherwise be a rash decision. With her coming to the end of winter and much of her muscle lost to keep herself warm throughout the worst of Tinuvel’s weather (as well as a lack of food to sustain a healthier body weight), it wouldn’t be wise to challenge a stallion who hadn’t faced the same trials. The cold of Tinuvel may be a disadvantage, but would it be enough to beat both her lack of muscle and lack of experience in years on the stallion before her?
Mariael had showed she was disinterested in backing away from a fight, but she was quickly learning being a queen did not always mean brawn, but often brain, too. A pause of silence settled briefly between them (and she kept it brief purposefully, so as not to look as if she couldn’t make decisions easily) as she ran over the many pros and cons in her head.
“I will aid you in attempting to get your Forest back. I hold no alliances with whoever governs that territory now, and I know all too well the feeling of being stripped of the one place you’d call home.” She concluded, for this was not the first time, but the second… and Mariael would be damned before she’d dare to spend an entire year away from the Bay again.
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