njenyi and any;

[catfish]

Uncle Boo has been absent; Catfish done gone and grown up in his absence.

The buckskin few-spot leopard mare climbs the cliffs because she can. Not because she knows better, but because she can. Oh sure, she smelled the stallion and his herd but she ignores them and trespasses anyway. She blames it on the sparklies in all the rocks around her. She can be heard saying, “Oh shiny!” more than once, as she moves between the gleaming cliffs. Catfish particularly likes the red ones, the blue ones, and the green ones. “Shine-e-e-e-y!” she can be heard exclaiming over one particular ruby-rich stone that dazzles the swamp-thing’s eyes. “My shiney,” she says, fawning over the red gem and still highly ignorant of the nearby stallion and his mares.

If only she had known he was stripey.

Except we all know that spots and stripes don’t mix…

[Njenyi]

They keep wandering in, and Njenyi keeps keeping them.

He's been watching the spotted mare as she makes her way through the rocky herdland. She does not seem like much of a threat, but he's curious what brings her here. Something about the cliffs seems to be alluring to mares without stallions, and Njenyi is not sure what it is.

If he were to judge solely on this mares behavior: they are drawn in by the sparkling gemstones.

Eventually he leaves his rocky perch to follow after her, snorting quietly to alert her to his presence before he passes by and moves towards a low cliff where he knows the magpies nest. They tend to hoard the loose stones that they find, and he imagines that this spotted mare will like them.

"Look." he says, gesturing toward the nest, "Look."