down in the valley with whisky rivers; djinni

[zai]

have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?
just a cage of rib bones and other various parts

Djinni is, as always, everything that he is not.

His dark ears pin back in play at her teasing, his gray eyes rolling. “You know me, Djinni. Polite is not in my DNA.” He reached over, pulling on her forelock. “I don’t care if you are leader or Queen or Empress of Beqanna, I have no qualm of telling you to shut it.” Not that he particularly wanted her to be quiet. It was so much easier to carry on a conversation when she did all the heavy lifting for him.

It was, in fact, his favorite way of talking to others.

(Not talking at all, that is.)

Still, he eased gratefully into the silence, one ear flicking at the sound of branches cracking beneath the weight of snow before focusing back on her and her talk of her daily duties. He rolled his eyes a little but gave her a small smile, growing increasingly comfortable in her presence. “I have a hard time imagining you being responsible.” A shrug. “But what do I know? Perhaps you’ve grown boring in old age.”

He hard a time thinking of Djinni as anything but that seemingly young mare he had grown up around; the mischievous look in her eye and her wily way of getting into trouble. To think that she now had her hand on the helm of an entire land? Not unfeasible but difficult to reconcile with the vagabond of his memory. “I suppose I have nothing better to do,” he grunted, although some small part of him thrilled at the idea of fighting. Even easier than sitting in silence was losing yourself in a bare-knuckled fight.

He may not have a way with words, but he certainly knew how to make a point with teeth and hooves.

so it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess
and to stop the muscle that makes us confess

ZAI