Falls

As Celestine gazed suspiciously into the dark, she was met with the smoldering gaze of a stallion. Out of the shadows stepped a shadow itself, in the form of a lithe man, his scarred hide gleaming dully under the moonlight. Celestine’s dark ears remained fixed on him, as her did her icy gaze. He did not come very close.

When he spoke, the voice was cruel and guttural, hardly the voice of a horse. The liver chestnut’s head tilted like an enormous cat’s as he stated that she should not have taken a bath if she wanted to stay warm. Then, he demanded she step out, and her demeanor changed from suspicion to amusement.

“That’s awfully rude,” she said, her voice musical against the rush of the falls behind her. Her cold gaze raked over the smaller stallion as she slowly began to wade toward him, a perfectly innocent smile curling across her dark lips. “What’s so special about this particular spot? Or is it just because someone is in it, that now you must have it?” She stepped up on the edge of the pool, but her hind legs and tail remained submerged in the swirling, frigid waters. Snow fell around her in flurries now, but none of it stuck to the ground at her hooves. The season was still too early. “There. You should have plenty of room to go around.”

As she spoke, she became aware of a second stallion as he spectated on the pair at the edge of the pool. Without taking her attention away from the dark one, Celestine studied the other through her peripheries. He was tawny in color, with unusual white markings on his legs, neck, and face. She might have looked right at him, appraised him directly, if she had more trust in the little jackal before her, but that was not the case. She had very little trust in the dark stallion, and so she remained fixated on him as the other male began to speak.

He had an odd accent, Celestine noticed, and she could not help but let one ear flick toward him as he encouraged the other male to find a different source from which to drink. Whether he was correct about the presence of other streams, Celestine could not know. She was a stranger in these lands, and while she was not afraid of the unknown, it made no sense to pretend she belonged.

The tawny stallion continued to draw the attention of the dark stallion, and Celestine appreciated the effort, though she could not comprehend what his goal was. The scarred male was clearly dangerous, and though Celestine was confident that she could, at the very least, survive in a scrap against him, it wasn’t exactly something she was looking forward to. Was the taller male trying to get run off? Hesitantly, Celestine turned her face so that she could address the tawny stallion. It was possible the dark one was waiting for this moment to lash out at her, but she turned her attention from him anyway.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. It wasn’t exactly a snap, but there was irritation in her voice, mixed with genuine curiosity and veiled thinly beneath the musical tones of her voice which softened almost anything she said. “Have you come for a drink as well? Maybe you’d like it better if I stayed in the water.” She offered him a sweet smile, which wasn’t entirely malicious. “If that’s the case, it’s your lucky day, because I’m not getting out. You are welcome to join me.” With that, she brought her frigid gaze over the darker stallion one more time before turning up her nose and sliding back into the churning pool.
“Speech”