He may not be familiar to Rhadra, but, much like the mare in her own warm approach, the piebald stallion reacts to her greeting with the enthusiasm and attention of an old friend— or lover. It is a heady feeling to be regarded so by a complete stranger when for so long she has been beheld by no one. Rhadra leans into it indulgently, accepting for one selfish moment the keen interest of a man, her heart tripping on light toes as his warm breath mingles with hers. The brush of their whiskers is as shocking as static across dry winter coats, and her muzzle jolts away from that imagined spark before she withdraws in full.
She is determined not to be bewitched again.
Still—
Rhadra flicks her ears sideways in quiet dismay at his admission of being a native here. For only a moment she had cupped that hope that here was someone she had once known, someone who might have news of her sister or former herd, someone who knows her and is as glad to see her, but it disperses now through loose fingers to flow like a river out to sea. “Ah,” she replies. Her eyes rove Cain's blazed face, lingering only briefly on his dark eyes before her expression becomes self-conscious and flickers away to focus on the easy backdrop of the ocean behind him. His introduction jars in her a memory: this island is only one of many, she had been told, and Rhadra is surprised to count that over two years have passed since she arrived on this one.
Two years.
And in all that time, she's barely moved beyond the mountain in the north.
"Forgive me, Cain," Rhadra says, bringing her gaze back to his and, despite the girlish heat that suffuses her cheeks, maintains eye contact with the handsome Vanner stallion. "I feel terribly rude; my name is Rhadra. My family— that is, the herd I once traveled with— we were all Vanners. It's been a long time since I've seen another." Longer still since surrounded by the security of a herd. The thought flickers through her mind, quicker than seafoam dispersing over sand. "My daughter and I live on the Peak," she adds, and pauses to see what sort of reaction, if any, that information elicits from him. Rhadra has come to understand the Peak is somewhat of an anomaly on the islands, and not at all the traditional structure she had fully intended on finding for herself before her encounter with the silent bay stallion in the Falls. She doesn't know whether that's good or bad, only that it is... different.
Her eyes slip away from his again, this time sweeping down the strong flex of his shoulder and widening as she recalls he has just emerged from the ocean, likely on some errand or another. "I'm so sorry— I'm not keeping you, am I?" Rhadra asks, and though she leans a little as if to make way for him if he is on a mission, the movement brings her body a little more parallel to his, shoulders a little closer, neck nearly in line with neck. Instinct, she tells herself, the thought hammered down by truth a moment later: Loneliness.
rhadra