let them eat cake.

Tony's eyes narrow on the red mare as she responds to her initial remark about there being bodies in the pool. It's not the sort of reaction that the spotted girl had expected to find, and it made her even more suspicious of the stranger. Even Tony would have been surprised to hear the Lagoon had a red pool full of bodies, despite its dark reputation. Maybe one full of all the women's hopes and dreams, but bodies? Not so much.

As if following Tony's own line of thought, the red mare speaks of a battle with the Lagoon, which puts the young Peak mare on the back foot. Battling with the Lagoon heavily implied she was not in league with them, but that hardly meant much, all things considered. She had been raised knowing that women were just as strong as men, and then forced to reckon with the knowledge that just because one was a mare, did not mean they were good or worth saving.

Were it Nyimara standing in front of her, Tony might have been tempted just to push her in.

"Then you are foolish," she says instead, still glaring from where she'd planted her hooves at the start of this interaction. "Only idiots think they can waltz through protected lands without invitation. I've seen plenty of creatures claim to be 'walking' when really they're browsing our sisters, looking for one to steal."

Which was, ultimately a half-truth. She'd heard countless warnings of such things happening, but she'd experienced it herself only one time, when a Tinuvel stallion had come for Bubbles when she'd been little more than a girl herself. Ashteroth had appeared at her side then, and had helped Tony to sort out the stink of stallion from that of Tinuvel, and to differentiate that piney, wintery scent from the swamp mud of the Lagoon.

She smelled that same piney scent now and pulled on that thread of remembrance. "Who are you, and where on Tinuvel are you from?"

daughter of marceline.