Common

The mare's frank admission of looking for love mutes whatever sharp reply Rethe might have started to form and she is left staring, brow furrowed, at the dun mare. It wasn't that the black mare hadn't considered love or thought about seeking it out herself, but it had never, not even once, crossed her mind to voice such a thought aloud. The thought of intentionally being vulnerable was terrifying and not something Rethe had any intention of doing herself.

Thankfully, Tefnut moves onto something arguably safer by returning to discuss the Lagoon. In truth, Rethe had little knowledge of them. They were spoken about, to be sure, but they had never bothered her directly nor were they something she had heard about often. Hearing Tefnut proclaim that most were afraid and then to look at her with something Rethe was all too willing to believe was admiration set something warm blooming in her narrow chest and sent a flush to her dark cheeks. Before she can sort out what that emotion even is, Tefnut's attention is being pulled away again.

A stranger appears, lean and long limbed, wearing the same sort of laughing grin Rethe had come to associate with young Timberwolves, hunting on their own for the first time. It was a mix of overconfidence and a knowledge of their own lethal power without the maturity to know any kind of discretion. The black mare's ears tipped back as her gaze switched back and forth between them as they revealed some sort of shared history.

His introductory comment earns an amused snort from Rethe, though she lets the dun mare deal with him first. Her grin only broadens in subtle challenge as he claims to have no malicious intentions, given that there was enough of a pause there for her to read the unspoken yet.

"Oh, poor thing. Are you jealous?" She taunts him as though he were her own sibling, bold as brass without a hint of reservation. The offer that Tefnut then gives only further emboldens the dark mare who seems to flourish beneath the prospect of competition, even if it is one-sided. Lacking the sort of social experience to understand that Caine's compliment to Tefnut was just as likely to be mockery as it is to be genuine, Rethe assumed that his interest in interrupting was to finagle some sort of invitation himself.

Acting on instinct and a primal well of untapped rivalry, Rethe shifted her position to stand next to Tefnut as if they were bosom companions rather than just-made acquaintances and stretched try and touch her shoulder the way she'd watched her father do to her mother a thousand times or more.

"It's probably better for you to stay in the Lagoon, little demon-boy," she taunts, a smile lurking on her lips. It hardly matters in the moment that Rethe has no idea where she's agreed to live let alone any useful details about the mare she'd be accompanying or what she'd find once they arrived. All that mattered is that she could poke at someone, and find some sort of outlet for the butterflies in her belly. "You wouldn't be able to handle us anyway."