She is well and boy does she make him feel it, stretching out past him in a full gallop and with no hesitation at his proximity should she have buffeted him. She gallops because it is what she knows, what she loves, and there is nothing that can stop her now. The metal clings and clangs, the fabric now whips in the wind so sometimes the tassels bite at her flanks from the blanket bound to the chest adornment and shield at her withers.

He calls up to her, taunting her speed with not only his proximity but also commentary on the extras that he was free of comparably to her. Her ears flatten, venom seeping into her bloodstream and kicking her as surely as any spurred two-legged foot might have done. She surges forward again, nostrils so wide that it turned her profile into one of a horse in earnest. Endurance was the gift of their ancestors, but speed was the gift of her particular breeding and training. She sacrifices one, but not so much as she could have, for the sake of kicking sand up in his general direction.

She does have to weave more than he does, filtering between dunes in any direction she could not hear hoofbeats behind her. She dodges to and fro, turning so hard around one dune that her shoulder almost touches the uphill mound of sand. "Not so much as your ego does you," she shouts defiantly over that shoulder as she eyes him coming in behind her. Perhaps she had a mind to indeed outrun him - for all that he was handsome… except that he is clever and the oasis comes into view - stopping her in the sudden realization that the salty ocean had been taxing and the intense racing spirit had burned up much of her remaining relief.

She does not think, for that moment, of anything other than acquiring the water and quenching her thirst as she shoots off like a bullet and charges down the straight path to the shore of the freshwater collected in the midst of the desert.