Once, Hasan might have snapped back, but time and circumstance had hollowed his heart out like a gourd cracked and scraped empty by grasping claws. For a moment he stood still, processing the mare's sharp words, his expression still as the surface of a pond.

In the past year, with one of his most important senses stripped from him, Hasan had sharpened an existing skill: his ability to listen. And beneath the cutting words of what the mare did say, there was something else she did not. Hasan thought he knew what it was, but he also sensed it would be a fool's game to push her into speaking it aloud.

"Fine. Then stay. We can continue ignoring each other like we always have," he said, as if it was the most obvious solution to their quandary. He lowered his head to lip at the tasteless grass, but none of it passed over his tongue. He raised his head again, thinking.

"My name is Hasan. I thought you should know that, at least."