Rille listens as they speak of war, and holds his tongue for a long moment after as he processes what he has just been told. Then his ears tip back a trifle and, brow furrowed, he looks between the roaning and tobiano bays to share his strongest thought: “But, has that not always been the way? That a mare should lead the herd to the best grazing and the nearest water, that it is mares who band together in unity and there will be a stallion, yes, but he is vital only in the sense of procreation and additional defense— how fragile must this Warsaw's ego be to incite a war against the natural order of the world, as if he has any sway or say in it.” Among the pine forest it was certainly not the blanketed buckskin who chose the actions of the herd on a day-to-day basis. Nor was it he whom the mares sought counsel from. Comfort, perhaps, and safety should a stranger come marauding, but if he was the sun who kept the darkness at bay it was a mare who was the sky which cradled his power and oversaw all, day or night. Rille thought this to be commonly understood. Warsaw's war seems to him the lashing out of a juvenile riddled with insecurity— but, oh, the damage even such a frightened child can cause in their tantrums.

Interesting, too, that his desperate grasping of control should target a herd outside his own. What must it be like to live under the rule of a male who assumes he is the ultimate authority? “I feel for any who might live under such a controlling eye,” Rille muses.

Then he whickers in sympathy. “I grieve with you for your losses. If I may be of any help in recovering the lost, know that I give it unasked. But, come; let us not linger here when we might be wandering the woods. Forgive me, again, for my aimlessness. All I know is what I have been able to parse from the memories she has shared, and her stories were often not grounded in reality.” He looks about, then chooses a path almost at random: one that happens to wind closest to some of the pines that grow here but has a generous enough path that the three might walk shoulder to shoulder fairly comfortably. Stepping forward, he indicates the way he wishes to walk with a toss of his head before ambling on, keeping to the left so that the mares might arrange themselves however they wish without feeling as though he has deliberately parted them down the middle.

The wind moves more freely here, drifting through the trees to tousle hair gently. The birds and mammals are unsurprisingly the same sort of company he enjoys in his own woods, though the plant-life has some variation and he makes a pleased sound when he sees the flat top of a fungus stair-stepping high up the side of a living tree. He is used to the small, pale mushrooms which grow in the dark near the ground with softly tapered heads to sluice the water more quickly to the soil, or the wider kind which thrive on the fallen bodies of the forest. “She liked those,” he says as they pass the wide-brimmed mushrooms growing just out of reach. “She called them fairy steps, as if they grew to let the little winged-folk ascend the sides of trees to their little homes nestled in the boles and crooks. So many of her stories were like that— utterly fantastical, filled with creatures I've never myself seen.” His ears tick sideways and he hesitates, chewing the air very briefly before he asks the question: “Are there such things, here? Fairies?”