Falls

Movement flickers in the corner of her sight. Minthe’s trap, delicately laid and nearly as imperceptible as spider-silk, has triggered, setting off an all-too-familiar chain of events. Her ears are the first to turn, just after the stranger’s call comes flowing across the plain, the long fluted things swiveling lazily over. Her delicate head follows suit. Eyes the color of mahogany focused on her prey, outwardly tender; she had sized up his form, stealthily, as she turned, settling on his fine-featured face and meeting his stare. Another stallion, of course, tall, dark, and handsome, with a convex profile unlike anything she’d ever seen. So unique, and yet, she notes, he holds himself as if he’d love nothing more than to burn into ash under her fiery scrutiny and blow away.

Frustration momentarily floods her. How is he supposed to fight for her affection if he doesn’t think he has a claim to it in the first place? As the mare pivots, walking leisurely in his direction, she ponders over it, considering. Her nostrils flare, drinking in his scent: deeply, headily masculine, a blend of musk and dry sand and seawater. Different, somehow, than that of the two stallions she’d antagonized in the Meadow, different even than hers. Was he from one of the other Islands she’d seen dotting the far horizon along the coast?

Her tail flicks as she walks, the gears of her mind turning even as she casts her gaze to the ground, peeking with feigned shyness at the dark stallion in snippets. Normally, Minthe wouldn’t have been the one to close the distance between them, on principle, but the last two had been so easy that she didn’t mind doing a little more work. This man at least has the decency not to show up half-starved or covered in dirt. She comes within a polite distance, taking a few steps nearer before stopping, a subtle test of how close he’d let her get. How long, she wonders, before he will admit his thirst for the press of her bloodred body against him? What series of his buttons can she push to tease out his true self, to get him to see his full potential? How much is she willing to try before she declares him a lost cause, just like all the others before him, and moves on to greener pastures?

Her sweet voice comes through gently smiling spotted lips.

“You rang?”