The last few days had given me plenty of food for thought, so much in fact, that I felt indolent and stuck as if I'd gorged myself on an all-you-can-eat buffet. Garmr's decision not to run, voiced after he'd run off one of his pretty little mares, left me in a bit of a pickle. See, I had no real interest in the Boss position myself. Too much work, too little time for fun. But Garmr had been a steady - and lenient - Boss. I'd grown my own little grouping of mares to occupy my days and had - by nature of my position - not had to deal with the petty squabbling of my brothers.

Until now.

Now, suddenly, my days of leisure and personal enjoyment stood on the cusp of being curtailed. I knew little of Wechuge other than the fact that as a brother he was hot-headed, prone to acting before thinking, and had personally stepped on my toes more than once. I was not particularly fond of him, but his only vocal opponent currently was Rutger, who posed his own set of difficulties.

I didn't know him well, despite me having a part in his residence here (yeah, that might still bite me in the ass, don't think I'm not aware). What I did know of him was that the had helped a brother escape the Lagoon in the past, ran off to snuggle the spotty Hills mare, and then showed up here again based on the sort-semi-not-really-real offer of help I'd extended. None of that said to me that he was likely to be the sort of boss that would be chill with me running around bartering off my kids, raiding every month or generally just doing whatever the hell I pleased.

He sounded like Nahawi, in a way, and I was unsurprisingly not comfortable with that idea.

Even so, I had not said anything yet. There was still a chance some other brother might poke his head out and actually prove his worth once it actually came time to vote, but there had been no news yet. And so I found myself trailing the two backstabbing 'brothers' who had offered their votes in exchange for the release of prisoners that shouldn't even belong to them. The thought of offering a vote in an election you would not be sticking around to live through was despicable to me. Cowardly.

And yet Rutger had immediately lapped that offer up.

Thus, I found myself following behind one of the objects now up in the air. I hadn't seen her around much, but I imagined that was because she - like most trinkets - tended to stay hidden and out of the way. I sauntered toward her now with nonchalance, an easy grin on my lips that did not touch my dark eyes. "So you're the one." I murmur lowly, settling to a halt near her. "It'll never make sense to me why the brothers keep claiming little scaredy cats and then being upset when they are - predictably - scared."

I tilt my head, trying to take her in. In reality, I didn't have much reason to approach her, other than that learning more about her might give me something interesting to play with later. And, if I were being honest with myself, I wanted to see if my presence would goad the coward who was trying to bargain for her freedom into showing up. "So you don't want to live in the Lagoon, huh? Too frightening for you?"

Stallion - Adult - 15.2 - Brown Overo