Meadow

He sees her warnings. The cant of her ears, the shift in the way she holds her body, that sharp gaze skating a razor-thin edge across his face. Kendry’s eyes narrow against her gaze as if he’s facing into a bitter wind. Though she be small, he has no doubt she is fierce. Her story is told simply, casually, in a way that makes Kendry’s heart ache and he strives to hide the sympathy that wells in his eyes for the girl who never knew anything soft, or kind. He averts his eyes and blows out a long breath. When he looks again at the mare, her own gaze has slipped away from him. She considers the snowy landscape, and he considers her.

“Your heart beats still,” he assures her. Not that this mare is in need of reassurance—perhaps when she was a girl, maybe, but now? Kendry sees an individual extremely self-contained, rattled only by the cough let loose in her lungs. She being a well-trained warrior besides, Kendry has to reign in hard his bleeding heart. She is no lost filly seeking warmth, no child abandoned wailing to the world. “But, I think I must concede. Your tales carry much on few words. Mercy,” he says this last with a light laugh, a contrived sound of amusement but genuinely kind as he turns the conversation away from her past— for his sake, if not hers.

He look away again, ears perking as that distant owl dives from its treetop, needles hissing in protest, to glide on silent wings away. “Where is it you’re headed now?” he asks the question softly, trying to sound aloof and indifferent and failing. Kendry doesn’t do pretense. And so he abandons the attempt quickly, his blue eyes falling back to her now with naked interest. “And will you go it alone, or can you bear some company, at least for a little while?” She doesn’t need him, he knows. Perhaps it is Kendry who needs her.