Any.

[Ivar]

I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take She draws closer, the distance between them now easy to cross with a curious touch. Yet he refrains – an uncommon thing – and merely watches. It is not that he fears she might lash out, that she might try to deny him his rights as the first stallion to find her alone in the Field. Even if she were to bite him, her flat teeth are harmless, her hooves might bruise but would never cut. Feral. That’s the word for her. Not wild in the ways of the woods, willfully ignorant of the rules. No, she is something different, something untamed. Something he wants. So when she answers without hesitation, when she names his next actions before he can even enact them, Ivar smiles. The scowl from before has faded away, replaced by a curious tilt of his pale face. “Yes,” he replies. “I will be.” Perhaps she had expected him to be flustered at her assumption, perhaps she’d hoped that social mores would strike him like a bolt of lightning and illuminate his rather uncomfortably forward actions. Or perhaps – Ivar barely dares hope – she is as forward as she seems, a fitting match for the too-bold stallion. Trissy, she tells him, from a place that is no longer. Before the Reckoning, he decides, else she’d surely name the kingdom. In this new world, Ivar suspects Nerine might be most fitting for this dark-eyed creature: a land of warrior women with hearts as hard as their damn granite cliffs. The idea of keeping her away from Nerine, of denying the seaside kingdom an ideal recruit…it is thrilling. Ivar wants her instead and so he will take her, politics be damned. He will take her with him, he knows, and bridges the gap between them with this intent. His breath ghosts along the curve of her neck – this close, she seems so small, so fragile. Yet the muscle beneath Ivar’s roving mouth is lean and strong. The teeth that close over the thick flesh of her shoulder prick at her skin, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make it clear that they could. Mine, he declares with the painless nip: claimed. “To Loess first?” he asks the tangled strands of her raven mane, “Or would you like to stop somewhere along the way?” king of loess minimal smoky grullo tobiano | equus kelpus