Meadow

Geçersiz took his time approaching the figure, not wishing to startle them. He couldn't see well enough to tell if they were napping in the pre-dawn stillness, or if they, like he, were already awake. By the time the brown-black mare was visible, she was already watching him with eyes that glowed as brightly as his own, and he instinctively stilled his forward motion. There was something strangely familiar about her, which, for the colt that had spent most of his life wandering from continent to continent in the wake of his mother's death was an uncommon feeling. It was rare for him to feel as though he knew someone, and rarer still for them to feel the same way.

He froze, staring, as she seemed to do the same, and did not move again until she provided the answer they both sought.

"For the pain," he echoed, the ghost of his mother's voice in the words he chose. The memory of that day was unexpectedly sharp, and he swallowed down the lump in his throat to fit a tremulous smile on his lips instead. Geçersiz had spent years shying away from memories of the Dunes when he could, so to have them brought up nearly instantly had left him off-kilter. "You were my second patient," he murmured, his voice strained but soft. He had been so proud to accompany his mother that day, and eager to meet more of his father's herd. A moment later, he offered the name he only vaguely recalled, stored as it had been behind a great door of repressed memories. "... Shenzi, right?"

He sidled closer again, drawn by the sight and scent of blood that had dried and grown scabbed across her muzzle. "You are injured," he murmured, unconsciously echoing his departed dam's cadence of speech, and studied the wound with a tilt of his head. "Not a lion this time, I imagine," he tried for humor, but the nerves of this day and the unexpected reminder of his mother had sapped the lightheartedness such humor required. He wasn't entirely certain what had caused the minor wound on the mare's muzzle, but it looked to be superficial from here and likely didn't require attention.

But Geçersiz both wanted to help and needed to get his name out there so that others might eventually come to him with bigger problems. And though it shamed him to think it, their prior interaction might encourage this battle-scarred maiden to be more lenient with him as he worked out how best to ply his trade.

"... Do you want help?" Nerves gave the words a quiver in his mouth that he tried hard to hide. Shenzi was intimidating at the best of times, and he wasn't certain that either of them were at their best in this moment. The sooty stallion shifted in place to gesture toward the array of herbs and pastes and powders he'd collected and gathered over the past season as if to illustrate his profession. "I don't have any aloe, but I have some camphor that might soothe it?"