When in doubt, use nettles.

Confusion clouds his brow, and she watches him impressively as he puzzles over her indifference. She does not know what part of her strange demeanor has turned him from her, but Sid is aware that she has a great number of quirks and oddities that would given anyone a pause... let alone a stallion who believed he had been gifted an entirely sound mare and received her instead.

When he speaks again, she notes the warmth of his tone with only minor confusion. He does not need to coddle her with the same gentle tone he might with flightier mares; Sidika prefers this land, and is content with the knowledge that it is one of her own People, however distantly related, that holds guard over it. The confusion deepens as he assures her that she is free to retaliate if someone were to step between her and her duty, and she chuckles dryly.

His kindness makes her feel uncomfortably warm and she ducks her gaze away from him to respond. "Thank you, but I do not fear that." She feels off-kilter and it shows in the brute honesty that slips past her lips before she can reconsider the words. "Bored so make heart matches from air."

Annoyed with herself, she shrugs. Being a young mare around well-meaning companions had lead to much heartache as they tried to match her with stallions. At best, they saw her for her usefulness, not for who she was. And at worst, they refused to countenance her as marked and strange as she was. Even if they were able to look past the scars, and the mature ones often were, it was only by acknowledging her as a healer first, mare second, and Sidika a distant third. Sid had long ago stopped caring if they saw her, so long as she was left to find her own reprieve and to ply her trade usefully.

As he mentions the Sons of Mira and their wives, as though they were a separate entity, she turns to look at him, confused by such a strange wording. Such pomp and circumstance almost had to be attributed to a subject of Arabians, and she considered asking on it before dropping it. She would find out soon enough who these Sons of Mira were for herself and it was not worth the waste of breath to ask Maslakhat.

At the knowledge that there was a smaller oasis that she might yet claim as a base of operations, a genuine smile flickered across her dusky lips. "I will work there, then." She offered, nodding to settle the matter as though a deal had been struck.

Appraisingly she turned her gaze back to Maslakhat. He was clearly well-bred enough to not ask her of her scars, to pry into why they dragged across the length of her body in no discernable pattern. But he had to wonder. They all seemed to, and while she would not mind sharing his company again in the future, she had no need for the small talk that often preceded such a question. Only foals were forthright enough to spit it out at first, and the handsome stallion that stood before her was certainly no foal. "You wonder about scars, yes?"

"Bobcat attacked, as child. Wounds small, but filled with poison and spread." It is almost a challenge, at first, in its phrasing, but the words are resigned in a way, as though the tale were something she told often. She gestured to the breadth of the wounds across her body. She'd been no more than a few months old, sleeping at the base of a cliff in the shade. The cat had been unusually large for it's side, but near starvation with bones that protruded across her thin body. Sid's mother had been nowhere near, too busy entertaining Sidika's father to both wondering how her daughter was doing, and arrived late to her daughter's screams of pain and panic.

The punctures had festered, as those of sharp-toothed animals often did, but her mother's pride and guilt had prevented them from seeking the help of the medicine woman, Tedavi, until it was too late to preserve the filly's looks. It was only when the girl lay comatose from the infection that her mother had relented and abandoned the child to the Tedavi. Sid had woken up days later, and had learned her trade as payment for the care that the woman had bestowed upon her.

"The Tedavi healed me, and I learned in payment." She finished quickly, and turned from him so that she could both drink and hide her face from him. The bay stallion was a perfect stranger to her, and her tale had not changed in the fifteen years that she'd been telling it, and yet somehow offering it to him had felt more personal than usual. She didn't want to see his reaction to her story, for it was not his pity that she wanted.

After sating her thirst again, she turns back to him, mask intact. "Do you have other questions?"