Common

As a child, Dawn had spent fleeting amounts of time with men, and she can still remember how unpleasant they had smelled to her: particularly in autumn, when they seemed to relish being as sweaty and disgusting as possible.

"Ma, why did he smell so bad?" she had once asked Aysu, after her mother had politely turned down a stallion's advances. The memory of her mother's response had faded with time, but the feeling of revulsion had not. The stallion's heavy, sour musk had felt sharp in her small nostrils, and she had wondered for some time afterward why any mare would let such a beast near her at all.

But as the wind shifts, carrying with it the heady scent of Masamune along with the floral sweetness of the yellow flowers, Dawn's stomach flips with a sensation as similar to revulsion as slumber is to wakefulness.

And, as if by some miracle, Masamune does not laugh at her awkwardness. Instead he is all warmth and sunlight, the cadence of his voice like flowing water to Dawn's ears (even if she does not quite hear the words themselves, dazzled as she is by the charming asymmetry of his grin). Dawn nods and smiles, her ears pricked with rapt attention, until quite abruptly it is her turn to contribute to the conversation. Her lips part as she mentally backtracks. What things would a normal horse say in this situation?

"Uh."

A good start. Perhaps a second try?

"No. No, I'm not from around here. I actually just arrived, uh, from the continent." She gestures with her muzzle in the vague direction of the sea. "I apparently have family around here, but I've never met them. What about you? You said you're from the Thicket, right? Is that near here?"

Unconsciously she places one hoof deeper into the forest of flowers, a hair's-breadth closer to Masamune.