Though the girl responds in Ak Burun’s tongue her words carry a foreign lilt. Not from the desert she and Shararat hail from, then, but elsewhere— somewhere mannered and civilized, it seems, from the genteel response she continues in the common tongue. Ak Burun tucks her white chin a little nearer to her chest, intrigued but also delighted by the girl’s cordial grace. "Excellent. I take it you must be newly arrived to our Dunes?" she asks as she turns to lead the way. She does not miss the Arabian girl’s distraction, and her own gaze follows that of Sayyida’s to see, irritatingly, Maslakhat’s slender form pointed at them from the top of dune. Lanetli nöbetçi, she thinks with a backward tilt of her ears, but as her companion defers to her lead her ears flick up and she proceeds without acknowledging that she saw the stallion at all.
"Your love to run is evident, Sayyida. With such graceful form and fleetness of foot I can imagine it must be hard to keep to a walk," Ak Burun continues as she turns, deliberately, away from the dune which Maslakhat crowns to head for a taller peak in the opposite direction. If he decides to join them she can plead a too-keen interest in showing the young mare the bounty of their home as an explanation for her oversight of his distant presence.
"Long enough," she replies vaguely but without malice as they reach the base of the dune, and Ak Burun pauses long enough to glance at the girl beside her —and see, surreptitiously, if they are indeed being followed. She smiles at Sayyida, though the expression is brief and does not quite reach her eyes. "I am Ak Burun. Come; splendor awaits," she says before striding up the slope, her legs working powerfully to gain ground over the shifting sands that spill hot around her hocks.
It takes effort to reach the top but the view is well-earned: the oasis below is cupped by an impressive range of dunes, the wind already erasing Sayyida’s hoofprints off the crest of the set she arrived on. Behind them are more dunes, some rising to even greater heights than the one they stand on, and over it all is an amber cast as sunset invites the land to glow. The sky seems even bigger from this vantage point. Ak Burun glances upward as if to look for the first glint of early stars before her gaze falls again to her companion. "Impressive, don’t you think? The Dunes are Salem’s crown jewel. You’ll not see a sight this grand from any other territory, nor horses as perfectly crafted for such a demanding land as our herd. You are a fine addition to this land of gold," she says, sounding extremely self-satisfied despite having had no part in Sayyida’s —or anyone else’s— presence here. "Tell me," she continues as her eyes shift to locate the fine-boned stallion. "How did you come to meet Maslakhat?" |