08-30-2016, 07:22 AM
The shrill whinny beckons him closer, but he half-expects yet another mare. They've been wandering into the Ridge of their own accord, and while Njenyi would never complain, he is also unsure exactly why it keeps happening.
Cream has beaten him to the stranger, a surprising feat for a mare as rounbdly pregnant as she is, and with a limp as well. When he is close enough, the black-muzzled stallion places a gentle nudge on her rump, a casual reminder of both his presence and the fact that she belongs to him.
This close, he can see that the stranger is a stallion rather than a mare. In most situations, Njenyi would have driven him out without a second thought, assuming him to be a danger to the herd. But the stranger has made no attempt to run off with Cream, the action that Njenyi would have taken were he in the other male's position. She is quite a catch, both obviously fertile and unable to put up much of an argument with her injury, yet the stallion is talking with her rather than driving her away. He is not a natural stallion, then, and the only other explanation for a creature as simple as Njenyi is that he is supernatural.
Njenyi has never been overly superstitious, but this stallion is black and white the way that equines are supposed to be, and he supposes that in a place so distant from the savanna that the Orishas might come in different patterns.
"Orisha," he says, lowering his head for just a moment in the proper greeting for a deity that one has never met before. "What should I call you?"
Cream has beaten him to the stranger, a surprising feat for a mare as rounbdly pregnant as she is, and with a limp as well. When he is close enough, the black-muzzled stallion places a gentle nudge on her rump, a casual reminder of both his presence and the fact that she belongs to him.
This close, he can see that the stranger is a stallion rather than a mare. In most situations, Njenyi would have driven him out without a second thought, assuming him to be a danger to the herd. But the stranger has made no attempt to run off with Cream, the action that Njenyi would have taken were he in the other male's position. She is quite a catch, both obviously fertile and unable to put up much of an argument with her injury, yet the stallion is talking with her rather than driving her away. He is not a natural stallion, then, and the only other explanation for a creature as simple as Njenyi is that he is supernatural.
Njenyi has never been overly superstitious, but this stallion is black and white the way that equines are supposed to be, and he supposes that in a place so distant from the savanna that the Orishas might come in different patterns.
"Orisha," he says, lowering his head for just a moment in the proper greeting for a deity that one has never met before. "What should I call you?"