the firestarters always get the burns
and the good guys never get the girl
The white woman outs a soft laugh when her young son protests at the coldness of the water at his feet. She lowers her head to drink, ignoring his whuffs and his pinned-down ears until he calms down. Then, she lifts her head to look down on him with one twinkling eye. "Just be glad it's summer." she tells him, adoring the way his mouth gapes like a fish. Instead she takes a few steps into the lake water - it is cold, yes, but he'll have to make do and just get used to it. She has no intentions of letting him run around and fly only to crash-land in the lake without knowing how to stay afloat. However annoying he may think it is in his teenage mind.
The pegasus is distracted from her son, of course, by the sound and scent of a familiar man approaching through the damp mist that for the moment still rises from the lake. She smiles readily at him, seemingly forgetting even Llowell at that point as she extends her neck to return his greeting. Although there may be a little hesitation somewhere in her mind at the beginning, she wants to forget the past, and gives in to the caressed feeling that he gives her.
Llowell by then, has followed her into the water, but shouts his surprise and Ilma smiles at him, too. She hears Svedka chuckle, and although she does not want to give her son the feeling he's being laughed at, she can't help the smile on her lips changing from a loving to a laughing-grinning one.
She turns back to her gold-and-white friend when he speaks, and nods. "Better to know how not to use your wings underwater," she tells him, but he's already in the lake and spreading diamond droplets around himself like a halo. She grins and then nudges her son. "Come on, it's going to take all day the longer you stall." She then walks with a determined stride past the palomino overo stallion's hind, head high and only looking back at him and, behind him her son, from the corner of her eyes until she's almost nothing more than a white head and blinking eyes in the lake. Ooohh yes, it's cold. But keeping up appearances is of utmost importance, too. With her wings tucked to her sides, they don't drag her down, they aero-dynamical shape designed perhaps to let air flow past easily, but doing that same trick to water, especially with the glands between them that secrete their natural oil.
Of course, her son will take at least thrice as long. She paddles a little deeper, making a long, slow turn to face the boys. After all, she wants to keep moving to stay warm.
@[Svedka]