12-05-2015, 11:05 AM
Scalped always said he saw without seeing; By that, she meant that he could scent danger on the air, could hear the subtle hitch in another’s breath, and knew things instinctually but that too, he was a bit of a dreamer. She had seen the sky in his eyes - an oldtime term for those that saw too much and nothing at all, like her son did. Mandan knew this, and knew it made him different - even careless, but he never bothered to correct this character flaw, and someday, he suspected it might be his downfall.
He did not know that she sensed this about him, this lovely little mare that walks beside him so demurely. Mandan is as taken with her as she is with him; she lacks his wild ways, is more refined, he would dare not think her tamed but gentled somehow, more gentle than he is ever like to be and not in the sense of kindness and things, but in that wild way that she senses in him that separates him from the rest, her refinery sets her apart too in a way that he appreciates. One could almost say he is smitten, so thoroughly charmed by her and so quickly! But then he has had sparse interaction with mares beyond his mother and that one time he spent in his half-sister’s care for a day.
Ygritte says his name is lovely and he throws her a rakish smile; he could say the same, that hers’ is foreign and lovely and sits heavy on his tongue. It tastes like an old pebble sloughed off from an older mountain and smoothed by waters of an older river and time. There is a bite to it too, godlike and hard, of ice and snow. Mandan knows of these things, even if he is a large plains pony - a true throwback to his mother’s breed, so unlike the trickster-magician-father he doesn’t know about (Scalped kept nothing back from her children except this, with him, the culmination of her immortal years in this once-tiny and now wholly grown son). Her smiles are just as lovely as her name and frequent; he likes the constant company of them.
His rangy stride is kept short to keep abreast of her, so she does not have to over extend herself to keep up with him. They pass from tree-shadow to tall grass, going round and round again as if this is something they have always done together. Maybe not the two of them per say, but some mare and stallion, together, always, walking as natural to them as breathing. Their hearts synced as much as their hoofsteps, beat for beat, and he finds himself smiling too, ever that coltish quirk of his lips that leaves his countenance boyish and promising as if he has the whole world to himself as well as all the time left in it.
She laughs!
It catches him off guard from the lovely (he is stumped, incapable of coming up with any other word than that to describe everything about her from the way she looks to the way she laughs) sound of it; it is sweet, apologetic, girlish, and it thrills him to the point that being tricksy himself, or rather, mischievous at times, he is already thinking of ways to make her laugh again. He had felt her eyes on him, their eyes would meet and hold pace to match their hearts and their breaths, then he would slide his away, so animal-dark in their gloss, almost unnaturally black but bright, bright, bright.
Mandan ducks his head, not shyly but as if brandishing his horns at an imaginary foe for her benefit. He is a stallion after all, and after such a compliment, he swells with pride and a measure of modesty; “Thank you, they may be striking but they are heavy.” he concedes, faintly serious but only for a heartbeat and he throws her that coltish grin. “No more striking than your points, they are as pink as the bellies of salmon.” The salmon-belly pink accentuates the bay of her, more so than the black of his points does for him. He thinks he should ask her something else, to keep the conversation going, to make the sound of her voice fill the air and his ears so he asks the usual trite thing that could be asked - “So, are you from around here?”
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