I want to learn you. She says and Rethe lets her teeth close over the snappy reply she wants to make that will most certainly push Tefnut - and the strange feelings she inspires - further away. There is nothing to learn. Rethe is nothing.

But she cages this thought too and tries not to frown too hard when Tefnut explains clover to her as though it is her first time. Rethe has never been fed in the manner of a baby bird, with food brought to her feet, and so she has no reference for it, but bobs her head gratefully and as implied, chews on it. It is as sweet as promised and saliva floods her mouth at the taste, reminding her of years gone by. Of warm summers spent cavorting at Fell's heels and chasing Khoshekh through the trees.

Tefnut speaks again, and the queries she makes leaves Rethe discomfited. Her favorite color? Place? How was she supposed to know? And more importantly, why did it matter?

And yet the indignance that arose every time the little black mare was faced with something impractical or nonsensical did not rise. There was a part of her that was flattered, that was tentatively hopeful that Tefnut meant it. That this wasn't just her going through the motions. She hadn't bothered to do this in the Dunes, but then again, Rethe cautioned herself, they hadn't really had time.

Her decisions thus far still stung. Rethe had not forgotten them, but she made herself set them aside for now.

"Flower I guess is the little white ones that grow on the mountain, like... like these." She says, her voice cagey and awkward in keeping with the tense set of her shoulders. She lips the Fairy Lanterns out of the bouquet to illustrate her point. Her eyes flicked back up to the mare and away again. "Color I guess would be gold." Specifically, the gold of her father's eyes and of the Tinuvel wolves.

She doesn't mention them. Doesn't want to try and explain herself.

"And place?" She thinks for a second, glancing upward to the small overlook she'd spent the day at after her fight with Tefnut. It probably still smelled like her tears. "The Bay." She hedges, and then eventually relents a little. "By the beach. I loved that spot and hated it at the same time. It was the last place I saw my mother before she left, and so it hurt but it was also special?"

Rethe shakes her head, feeling awkward and out of place and very, very bad at explaining herself. "And yours? What are your favorites?" She prompts, grateful the first awkward examination is over. She had grown more comfortable as she talked, but getting beneath Rethe's shell, beneath her pain, was a delicate and arduous task. Which is perhaps why no one else has bothered to try.