06-12-2017, 09:14 PM
Ivar is exceedingly confident - overconfident, it might seem; no one his age should be so sure of themselves.
When she strides forward to snap a warning at his throat, the piebald horse does not pull away. He blinks, only to stop a flyaway wisp of her red mane from striking his eye, but he had made no effort to shy away from what seemed - for all intents and purposes - a physical attack.
If he were a little older - a little smarter, a little more seasoned - he might have known better than to keep trying. It was clearly time for a wise horse to back away, to wait, but Ivar is young and brash. He neither submits nor presses harder; instead he changes tactics.
Glancing back over his pale shoulder for a moment, the smoky black stallion returns his gaze to the mare's. This time his head is lowered slightly, and he looks up with a half-smile.
"What if I'd just like to look more closely at that tree?" Asks the young stallion with what sounds likely truly genuine curiosity. It's not like any he's ever come across before. The baobab tree that grows beside a distant hill is striking, impossibly wide and limbless until the very top. "We don't have trees like that where I come from."
Ivar doesn't add where it is he's from, at least not until he's spotted a novelty even farther into the lands of Loess than even the baobab tree. A spring - it smells like saltwater - emerges from the ground at the top of a rocky ledge, and it spills down into what seems to be a pool surrounded by ferns that would dwarf a fully grown horse.
"We definitely don't have things like that in Sylva." He says, with just enough genuine awe in his voice to reveal his true intent. He really does just want to see Loess. He has seen the wonders of the other lands - the active volcano of Tephra, the glowing waters of Ischia, the granite cliffs of Nerine. Surely Loess has things equally unique; even from where he stands at the edge of the realm he can already see two things he'd never before imagined.
When she strides forward to snap a warning at his throat, the piebald horse does not pull away. He blinks, only to stop a flyaway wisp of her red mane from striking his eye, but he had made no effort to shy away from what seemed - for all intents and purposes - a physical attack.
If he were a little older - a little smarter, a little more seasoned - he might have known better than to keep trying. It was clearly time for a wise horse to back away, to wait, but Ivar is young and brash. He neither submits nor presses harder; instead he changes tactics.
Glancing back over his pale shoulder for a moment, the smoky black stallion returns his gaze to the mare's. This time his head is lowered slightly, and he looks up with a half-smile.
"What if I'd just like to look more closely at that tree?" Asks the young stallion with what sounds likely truly genuine curiosity. It's not like any he's ever come across before. The baobab tree that grows beside a distant hill is striking, impossibly wide and limbless until the very top. "We don't have trees like that where I come from."
Ivar doesn't add where it is he's from, at least not until he's spotted a novelty even farther into the lands of Loess than even the baobab tree. A spring - it smells like saltwater - emerges from the ground at the top of a rocky ledge, and it spills down into what seems to be a pool surrounded by ferns that would dwarf a fully grown horse.
"We definitely don't have things like that in Sylva." He says, with just enough genuine awe in his voice to reveal his true intent. He really does just want to see Loess. He has seen the wonders of the other lands - the active volcano of Tephra, the glowing waters of Ischia, the granite cliffs of Nerine. Surely Loess has things equally unique; even from where he stands at the edge of the realm he can already see two things he'd never before imagined.