Keeper-
Keeper meant no offense to him!
He takes a careful cautious step back from both of them and her heart goes out to him, rising up in the black shine of her eyes as she stretches her nose out to him and blows out a calming breath. “I have a cousin that can turn into a coyote, so I’m used to it. Just took me by surprise is all.” She doesn’t admit that she had been sniffing through leaves and mice droppings when she happened upon the cat-scent. It had been faint and sort of whispery, raising all sorts of instinctual alarms but she knew better than to freak out in this land - many of them wore other skins and shapes beside their own horse-ones.
“Bet it was quicker traveling that way…” she muses, imagining how it might be to wear the skin of a deer and go leaping through the woods. Deer were her favorite creature, but she was an unkempt clumsy little mare. Tickaani identifies herself as the blue roan and Ryan as the purple-pointed buckskin stallion, and tells Keeper that she is new and he is not so new. Then the blue roan barks out a laugh of disbelief and the dunskin tilts her head to the side, her smile is gentle as she schools the mare on this place. “He might be able to fly or breathe underwater and he might not, but there are others here who can and do just that!”
Tickaani’s giggles are pleasant to her ear but still full of disbelief and she gives Ryan a sympathetic look. “You might have to show her to make her understand better.” Keeper is intrigued enough to want to see him shift to but then her brain gets the better of her. “Then again, that might scare the life right out of her.” She chuckles just a little, moving closer between the two of them until her shoulder brushes Ryan’s companionably and her nose drifts across the blue slope of Tickaani’s neck. Keeper is a creature of touch and it says more than most words ever can, both are tender assurances that she is there and staunch in her support.
It doesn’t occur to her to mention Hyaline at the moment.
Ryan is the center of attention now.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless