Meadow

He was young, she could see it on him. He reeked of it. Not yet ripened but yet, he stank. Echidna had been young once but she had never quite felt it. Not like she should have. She would bite him if this were a different time, sink her teeth into him like a viper. Serves him right, she thinks sullenly, for his smug face.

But she wasn't that mare anymore.
Was she?

Echidna's tiny ears flick back, downward, a soft warning. A gentle nudge, here there be teeth and hooves and the heart of some wild thing. Her tail whips at her broad rump. "I was born in the snow, under the shadow of a great mountain," and she pauses long enough to turn herself towards him a little. He regards her and she sizes him up, she had brought down larger and more eager stallions.

"My father raised me to a warrior and to kill anyone who got in the way. He wanted to take everything for himself and expell the traitors. I had a nanny," she chuckles then and remembers fondly the spotted stallion who had watched over her. "Pacino, that was his name, he was to protect me and teach me how to fight. I never knew anything soft or kind then. I'm not sure I do now either."

"There was a war, you see," she looks up at him and then away. Her dark eyes scanning the glittering snow and the dark and the trees all folding in around them. This spot reminded her of where she grew up. "A war to end all wars. It was my duty to serve and to fight until my heart stopped beating and I did," Echidna sighs and the memories swirling around in her mind like snow drifts settle.

"Until I didn't anymore," she shrugs a little, "but that's another story altogether."