I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness,
nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory
He does not find Keeper first.
He is, by nature, skittish. But it is not your typical horse-skittish. Something about that predator that some part of Solace can sense makes him less equine and more feline; instead of fleeing he is as likely to jump and hiss and strike out. Now, though, he hears the mare coming long before she reaches him and makes the conscious effort to pause, to look at the gold-and-white mare, green eyes tracing the streaks of blue in her otherwise normal coloring. He is not frozen and stiff in the way wary horses are, but frozen the way a cat goes motionless – appearing to be only a freeze frame, half still in motion.
“Hello, Solace,” Ryan smiles back, relaxing fractionally when she offers no threat, no recriminations. “I’m Ryan.”
The other half of her question is considered, mulled over the way he usually overthinks things. It’s a trait he inherited from his father, or so mother had always said. Ryan had never met Woolf, and thus thinks of him very little, though not little of him. Nairne had built Woolf up into a grand thing for her young child to imagine, and so he will always be thus in Ryan’s mind until reality proves him otherwise.
“Ah….no.” Should he be looking for Amet? He’d rather not. The stallion might be one of the very few who would recognize him from his first stay, and he wants to make a new start. “I’m actually looking for Keeper? We met in the Field. I don’t suppose you know where I might find her.” The smile now is shy, his eyes questioning. “In the meantime, I suppose, could you show me around?”
He’s curious to see it now, from the eyes of a new Keeper.
Ryan
( I love only that which they defend. )