Out of the corner of her eye she watches Kore pause, then turn away from the water to listen more carefully as Ak Burun laments the distance between herself and her sister, and it takes some effort not to let her lips quirk upward in satisfaction to see the slender girl so hooked. It would not do to spoil the game this soon. Her eyes flit between Maslakhat and then back to Kore. The mare will be easiest to manipulate. It is not for her, then, that the Akhal-Teke crafts her response, though her dark eyes flit between the two of them.
"She is not easily forgotten, my Shararat. Lively and graceful, vivacious as the flame she’s named for— why, I nearly mistook you for her in the dark, little bloom," Ak Burun smiles fondly at Kore before her expression falls again, and then her gaze shifts to Maslakhat. "Is her name familiar to you at all?" Not all the hope in her voice is feigned. Better to discover now rather than later what all he knows of the Arabian, if anything. Ak Burun does not like to be surprised.
And, though the ‘Teke knows Shararat would not be so disloyal as to defy her instructions to stay put and wait for the her return, the slender mare swings her white nose back toward Kore as if the other mare can truly be of help to her. "Or perhaps you were fortunate enough to encounter her, somewhere, on your way here? She leaves quite an impression even from a distance. Everyone’s eyes have always followed her over me," Ak Burun adds with a small sigh, and it is easy to slip into the voice of a sister slighted by her prettier sibling, as simple as recalling the hard, hot days of her childhood and pulling from a crack in that locked chest the envy she’d felt at being overlooked even once in favor of another. |