where the buffalo roam; any

[mandan]

He runs; his hooves strike a rhythm from the earth - like a drumbeat, to be perfectly cliche - that is as ageless and primal as the bloodline of the horse itself. It would be a lie to say that there is no freedom in the simplistic act of running, that he does not glory in it as a horse should for he does! It is clear to see in the way his horns skewer the air at every toss of his head, the way that his eyes are clear and bright, in the way his crest rounds in a stallion’s proud arch as his hooves find purchase in the soft loam and send it scattering to the wayside at his slapdash passing. Mandan was born to run, but not like the sleek racehorses that he has little knowledge of, but like those wild and wooly ancestors of his that used to run the plains beside the vast herds of buffalo (his mother told him stories of those great shaggy beasts that moved like small mountains beside the proud, fast horses) beneath the guidance of lean brown legs and slim brown hands gnarled in their manes. He thinks of man, that strange beast his mother told him of, though he has never laid eyes upon any such creature upon two legs other than the bears that stood in the rivers with fish in their mouths. This means he is thinking now, and thus his pace slackens, and this is how she comes upon him - slowed, pensive, his face shadowed by thought and the fleetest memory of his mother that dims the brightness of his eyes. He smells her, for he is a stallion first and foremost and her female scent caused his nostrils to flare in surprise at the fact that he was so near to another, so he slows further, his pace akin to hers’. She is odd like him, though her oddness lay in the salmon-pink points of her flesh that were otherwise blackened on him but he likes the contrast of her and his lips slide into a haphazardly boyish and charming smile. “I was,” he says, his voice as coltish as his smile - some parts of him still haven’t quite grown up, though a trace of the stallion in him lay underneath the lanky tone of his words. “I mean I am,” he amends swiftly, laughing a little as he looks from her to the meadow then back again. “Ygritte,” he tastes the strangeness of her name, foreign to his tongue but it seems to be a name as old as his perhaps. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says, remembering his mother’s lessons on politeness even though the response seems to him, contrite. “I’m Mandan, by the way. Care to join me?” Mandan inclines his heavy-horned head to the side indicating the meadow and the path they seemed to step upon, for it seemed to him to be a good idea to cool down with a walk after his wild run.