She looks at the mare, small and wide-eyed with a hint of yellow at her muzzle, and isn’t sure what to make of her. Annapurna, while not rude, is certainly not outgoing. It befuddles her, the mechanisms of socialization. This should come as no surprise, for she is a woman who grew up in isolation, who rarely spoke – and when she did, her words were often carried away by the wind before she could even hear them.
But she smiles at the mare, because, as we’ve said, she isn’t rude. She likes company – it is one of the reasons she’d stayed – and the mare seems bright enough that she might not mind the ice at her feet.
“I’m good with the cold,” Annapurna says, her attempt to explain it.
Before she can add more, another mare appears, this one younger than them both. Annpurna nods at her in greeting, watching shadows move around her, seemingly of their accord. This world is full of strange magic, but she still feels so new to it all.
“Sounds like a smart man,” she says. Not that she begrudges anyone for their temperature choices, it’s only that cold is mostly what she knows, and so it is what she gathers about her.
“I’m Annapurna,” she tells them both, though neither had asked, and she has yet to learn their names.
tell me that girl is not a song of burning