Common

Nervous energy crackles through her veins, making her mane feel heavy and hot against her neck where the flop-sweat gathers. She wants, more than anything, to have a real reason to forget why she is here at all, and not on Tinuvel where she belongs. To forget that she is as good as orphaned, despite her age. There her beloved parents were both - somehow - gone and there was now no one at all to watch over her.

No one to care if she ate, or drank. No one to make sure she did not sleep upon the rocks, or in a puddle. No one to reassure her that she was not a burden or a waste of a mare or a disgrace.

The anxiety brings on the attacks - she knows this - but her heart still flutters anxiously like a caged bird in a gilded cage. It is only the sudden approach of a stallion - young and beautiful and of a strangely similar hue - that breaks her from the ouroboros cycle of worrying, scolding herself, and worrying some more. Her green eyes widen as he comes near, and she forgets to breathe for a moment, struck dumb by the thought of the escape he might provide, the home and security and happiness and life.

She has half their life planned out - the kids, the house with the picket fence, the pets they'll keep - when his snobbish comment shatters the illusion. Her chin involuntarily drops into a startled 'o' of shock and the ears that had been so daintily perked in his direction flatten against her poll. "It's dangerous any time of year." She groused back, tail snapping sharply against her flanks.

As it had so long ago when her cousin had rescued her from the Bay's pointy sticks, her embarrassment tangled with anger and came out transformed into brattiness, and the roan mare took a step closer, glaring at the pretty man that had basically, pretty much, she was fairly certain, insulted her intelligence. "And what should I do instead, huh? Lurk in the shadows to poke fun at girls?"