They do not speak of their experiences – at least they haven’t yet – and so she cannot tell him that she, too, knows of places where her companions were nothing more than empty shells, driven only to eat and sleep and procreate. She had tried to make them something else, something bolder, something like those she knew, but she had never succeeded. Instead she had wished herself into an even more emotional thing filled with pulsing tendrils of sadness and euphoria, shaped like a star and a stone and so full of feelings that it almost drove her mad. Well, perhaps that experience she does not share with Walter. But black faces and blank words? Those she knows. Those she does not ever want to see again.
She is too full of emotion to not share it with others, and so when Walter tells her that he missed her too, she smiles so brightly that she turns entirely yellow. Only the pale feathers in her mane remain the same soft shade; the rest of her is suddenly bright enough to put the sun to shame. Concealing her emotions is not her strongest skill.
When he reaches toward her she does not let him pull away untouched; she is not willing to let this moment get away from her so easily as it had those years ago. Djinni reaches up and brushes her yellow muzzle against his jaw as he pulls back, a soft kiss with no hidden meaning. She’s smiling gently, not at all expectant, because she can empathize with the palomino stallion. She knows that he is not the physical creature she is, but his willingness to try means even more than his verbal admission. They have such vastly different modes of communication, but somehow Djinni feels that Walter truly understands her.
The compliment surprises her though, and she glances down for a moment, and what would be a blush is only her reverting to her familiar shade of grey dun, only the feathers remaining. “I thought about the Chamber,” she says, but chooses not to mention that she wants to know where her mother grew up. That’s not really the real reason anyway; she has no words for the real reason behind her curiosity. “What will you do?” She asks, because she is not quite ready to leave him for a new adventure, “Will you stay here?”