12-07-2015, 10:38 AM
Loam was not misnamed and like her namesake, she was earthy and neutral to an extent. Like her name, she was baseborn, claiming no greatness ran in the thick red soup of her veins though she was once told she could be anything she wanted to be by the queen-mother that saved her from the despair of the Den. Nera said she was a princess, that because she drank of the queen’s milk meant for her twins, that she was now a princess - how laughable! Loam never forgot how she got her start in life, newborn and starving, nudging the cooling flesh of her once-mother’s flank as the mare lay dead on the ground. Isn't It ironic that she can no longer recall the color of the dead mare’s skin?
Why is it a brawny buckskin hide can shake her neutrality, her certain aloofness, and make her sink into a strange and thoughtful mood?
She is aware that her disappointment is palpable on the air, discoloring the mood and moment between them - neither of which really existed beyond the terse conversation they had. Loam does not care that she has been nothing but sarcastic and rude to him; it was the damn fur of his, so alike to the one she stops her brain from naming in her mind and pushes the thought far into the cobwebbed corners of memory. She can see that her sarcasm was lost upon him anyway - he was far too blunt, and she was beginning to think of him as socially stunted.
"Really, how could you tell?” her tone is airy and indifferent; a mere affectation of feigned shock to match the droll expression on her face but her eyes give it away with their lack of feeling - everything is fake, except the way her eyes see past his and get caught up in the tawny color of his skin. He mentions not finding what she wants, and that is true of the creature who believed she had no wants or whims. She almost answers him but dwells too much on the thought that he isn't who she wants (and who is Loam to want? The allowance of such seems entirely ludicrous), but he'll do because he's a buckskin and damn this weakness for them that she has!
Loam catches him on his own technicality; “You said where not what I came from.” This is the first time her eyes hold a glimmer of something in them - mirth, maybe. “I came from the same place all horses come from, sliding out between their mother's thighs. But really, I came from nowhere because I've always been right here.” She alludes to the land around them but makes no mention of the scummed-over pond hemmed in by hemlock and hidden deep in the forest - it is hers, only hers. “Where do you come from?” she asks, devoid of any curiosity.