"I've always shown you who I am." She tells him, her expression clearing of any emotion slowly, almost as though she is struggling to process what he asks, and why he thinks he even has to.
She'd been helpless on the seashore for nearly six months, with nothing to her name but the mouse grey hide she was born into. She had naught but the wind in her black and white mane, and the sand clinging to her heavily striped legs. The sea had grown louder for a while - or perhaps the chatter of horses grew quieter - but eventually she had found it.
Tucked into the seashore, it remains
And so Djinni remains. She will stay along the grey-glass water and leave her footprints in the granite sand.
The large appaloosa mare disappears.
"Which would you prefer?" She retorts, settling into a body and face that seems to be precisely half Nayl and half Djinni. Not so blended in way that might be a child by natural means, but rather a pied mare with dark hair that in one instant seems to be both the Nerinian ironheart and the next the grey mage. Djinni remains that way for a moment, a challenge in her orange/black eyes for a hard while.
Then, and only then, does she change again, settling into the smoky grullo tobiano that had threatened him at their first meeting. Every thing is exactly the same, from the frosting in her mane to the minuscule golden earrings in her black tipped ears.
Everything is the same except her eyes, which instead of sea-glass green or black or molten golden or ice white as they often are, are soft and brown and gentle. Softer than the proverbial doe's eyes, Djinni's bright eyes are akin to a fawn's.
She has not forgotten his request: to show him affection for once. Now, in her true self, she stands before him.
"Why do you think I haven’t?" She asks him, taking a step forward with her head turned, until her cheek is but a hair away from pressing against his neck. Djinni has always been loose with her affection - a touch here, a hug there – her reluctance has been a recent change that she hadn't really even noticed. The question she asks is in equal parts meant for herself: Why hasn't she? Let him answer the question; surely that's better than finding her own answer.
smoky grullo tobiano