He has startled them. The pale mare swings away before facing him with open curiosity, while the black-and-white expresses her unease more subtly. Still, it is she who leans close to trade breaths with him first, and Rille extends his muzzle with gravitas to meet her and share in that sweet mingling of breath. He is amused at the questions springing from the palest among them, endeared to the innocence apparent in every easy line of her body and the unself-conscious way in which she speaks. No doubt her soul is crystalline.
One ear he trains on her, while the other swivels to point at the tallest of their company. The dark of her muzzle fades pleasingly to gray and then an even paler, like seashells, washed across her cheek and down her neck. He listens to them debate his strangeness, unperturbed by either the attention or their almost one-sided discussion. Rille has been third-party to such conversations before. He finds this one comfortable, quite homey, and as he leans now to exchange breaths in a similar manner with the slender mare he chuckles, the laugh sending small staccato bursts of air against her pink nose.
He glances at Relke, who has had no issue in identifying his sex by scent alone, with an amused glimmer in his eyes before he focuses again on the pale mare. “I do not share the gifts of you and your sisters,” he replies. “Suffice to say I shall never bear a foal. That is not my role in life’s cycle. Rather, me and mine assist only in creating life, while our more capable sisters sustain and nurture it with every bit of their being and with far more patience than, say, a stallion could or would.” He is content to lead the girl along a subtle path and allow her kin, her fellow mare, to fill in the details as needed. Rille cannot be more specific than this.
“I did not catch your name,” he adds. “But if you would like to call me “brother,” you may.” He includes Relke in this more general statement, nodding his dark head so low to them both that his thickly whiskered chin bobs briefly beneath the water and hangs, dripping, as he raises his nose to point it at the waterfall showering them all with mist. “Were the two of you summoned also by this one’s call? Once I heard it I could not keep away. Such majesty the world offers us, and constantly.” He is humbled, and tucks his wet chin tight against his chest reverently.