Meadow

She seemed undeterred by his awkwardness and giggled as if he'd said something funny. Taurus wasn't confident whether she was laughing at him, but it almost felt like it. As if he'd already made some secret faux pas he wasn't aware of. His warm eyes narrowed slightly, but he did not shift to move away... mostly out of stubbornness. He'd found this quiet patch of Crossing first, so if her intent was to run him off of it she was sorely mistaken.

Whatcha doing out here by yourself, Taurus? He was mostly distracted from the content of her question by the expression that she wore. She was looking at him as if he were something worth looking at; as though he had something that she wanted, despite having nothing to his name. The last time he'd seen something similar had been shortly after Eirlys had chased him away. He'd found refuge from his heartbreak in the arms of a pretty mare with ears that touched at the tips like a halo... and then had promptly fled from her once the guilt of what he'd been doing had caught up with him.

He didn't deserve to love again when everything he touched turned to ash.

The guilt prompted by that memory sent his walls racing up, blocking off the tender parts of him in great sections of iron cladding. The transition was a subtle one outwardly, but he could feel the cold shackles of his own isolation clamping back into place.

He smiled, with far more ease than he felt, and tipped his head toward the plentiful grass around them without taking his eyes off of her. "I was eating, until you showed up." There is neither accusation nor flirtation in his tone, and he subsided into silence again as she explained her own purpose for being here.

Taurus found it hard to believe that a mare that looked like her had not yet been approached by any of the lusty bachelors roaming the Crossing, especially with warmer seasons ahead, but he crushed that thought between his fingers before it could lead to further exposition. "I suppose you do," he answered with a faint, easygoing smile as she implied that she knew him, as if a name alone was some sort of claim. "I'm the first horse you've spoken to since arrival?" He questioned, not bothering to hide his surprise. "Do you know where you are then?"