Common

The figure that arrests his forward movement is a mare, which is not wholly surprising. While such a notion might have surprised him as a wee colt, his adulthood has been categorically controlled and dominated by strong women who seem to care little for his own desires. And so while the spotted mare is not hostile, Rehoboam's guard raises haphazardly: nostrils flaring, brow furrowing, ears swiveling lightly back - not pinned, just... watchful.

She apologizes and he rewards the courtesy with a minute dip of his head, but his eyes remain watchfully pinned on her face. He hasn't spoken to anyone other than Theseus in months, and it occurs to him that he is rusty in all of his social graces. Once, he had served as the Lagoon's Marauder, beneath the likes of Rade, Tyr and Nahawi. The mouthpiece of an entire organization trying to remake itself anew. Now, he was a shell of a stallion, hardly fit to serve as a sentry.

It isn't until the red mare mentions that he is familiar to her that the same sensation rises in him, and his gaze narrows further in contemplation, trying to scroll through his mental rolodex to find her. Even when he does locate the memory, it is hazy, the details lost to time. What he does remember is that he had been an idealist, then, and that she - like so many others - had turned him down. She was hardly unique in that category, which was why he had not held onto the details.

Her second question sends an involuntary shiver down his coat. While his time with Arsinoe in the Badlands had done something to assuage his deep-seated hatred of the southernmost isle, much of that progress had been lost with Osiris' death. "I've spent more time on that godforsaken island than I care to admit," he says, though the words - despite their crassness - lack hostility.

The tobiano lapses into silence for a moment, dread coiling in his belly. He had not been wholly unaware of where he was or what he was doing as he meandered the edges of the Commons, but he had long ago stopped viewing it as much of a threat. As a Lagoon stallion, it had been a place to patrol, a place to find new stallions for their ranks, and so the dire warnings his father had long ago imparted onto his children had faded from his mind.

But Rehoboam had no rank to protect him anymore. No home to belong to, let alone one to go back to.

"I suppose you intend to take me back." It is more statement than question, the words heavy with a somber emotion that refuses to be named. At least he didn't recognize her from the Badlands, though he'd spent what little precious energy he had on avoiding whoever it was that owned them now. "Where shall you tie my leash now - is it still the Hills?"