I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Ashhal wades into the spring without looking back at Tarian, though he is perfectly aware the other stallion had indeed followed him. His fellow pegasus may still feel the weighty burden of having to do things one doesn’t want to, but Ashhal had shed that lifetimes ago. Once upon a time, he might too have felt that burden. But as the decades passed and he died again and again, such things had grown to matter less and less. Until they had ceased to matter at all.
Tarian had better hope he wasn’t similar to Ashhal in that respect. Though he tries not to, he remembers the cold precision of his youth. The way he had faced the world with emotionless calculation, determined to let nothing sway his judgement. What an absolute fucking imbecile he’d been.
Still, even then, he’d been nothing of a diplomat.
Tarian had said he didn’t need a diplomat, but Ashhal is not entirely sure he believes him. He could barely even keep his foul temper in check with the residents of this kingdom. Forget someone who wasn’t.
Declining to respond for the moment, Ashhal instead drops into the water, dunking his head briefly. When he resurfaces, the grime and sweat of the day sluices away with the water. It leaves him marginally cleaner, though no less disheveled. Shifting, he fixes his dark gaze on Tarian, features unreadable as he considers his request.
“You can extend your pleasantries to the Queen,” he replies abruptly, clearly disgruntled now. “I have no fucking pleasantries to extend.” In truth though, if he were simply being invited to act as additional muscle, he would not be entirely opposed to that. Especially if he didn’t have to speak and there was a high possibility of a fight breaking out. Shaking his head, tangled locks whipping to fling water in a wide arch, Ashhal grunts before settling back into the water and closing his eyes. “If I don’t have to say a damned thing and don’t have to look friendly, I’ll go.”
@[Tarian]