08-31-2019, 08:34 PM
Something moves in the distant snow, and Lepis’ blue ears flick toward it. Too small to be a horse or a hungry predator, it is nevertheless coming directly toward the Comtesse, who shifts her position so that she might better face the approaching creature.
It’s a fox, she soon sees, silvery and difficult to see in the sunlit snow. It is fitting in this environment, Lepis thinks, but the way that it approaches her suggests that it is no true canine. There is a horse there somewhere, a sentient creature behind those sharp eyes, and it is to them that the dun mare bobs her head in a polite greeting. She has little experience conversing with foxes, and the body language that he uses goes unread; she knows only that he’s come close enough to speak, and speak he does.
His voice is the same, she finds, whether spoken around flat equine teeth or pointed canines, and the tobiano pegasus confirms her suspicion that yes: this shifter is Jesper, the leader of this frozen island.
“It’s been a while,” she says, and wonders how clearly the vulpine creature recalls their last meeting. She’d been less than hospitable, she recalls, defending Sylva to her fellow captive. Of course, she’d still been in denial then, refusing to acknowledge that the autumn kingdom was as much her prison as her home. The beatings hadn’t started yet, she remembers suddenly; they’d started after the black stallion had returned to his then-home of Ischia. Her wings had still been unbroken then, and the navy haired mare pulls them tighter to her body at the memory, as much an effort to reassure herself they are still undamaged as to warm herself from the chill that skips along her spine.
Truthfully, she has not given the stallion much thought in the time that has passed since. Only her son’s news – that Sabrina had lost her challenge to Jesper – had even informed her that the stallion was living in and leading her neighboring territory. Lepis is without spies on the frozen island, and is unaware that the fox in front of her has been so recently briefed on the goings on of her home. Had she been, she would have been eager to correct information that was more bias than fact, knowledge tainted by the feelings of a roan stallion who prides himself on being exceptionally irritating.
“Oh I don’t plan on staying long,” she replies to his quip about being prepared for the cold, but its said with a smile at the edges of her navy mouth. “I only wanted to come and say hello, to learn what you’d be willing to tell me about how Icicle Isle fares, and to see if there was anything you might want to know about Taiga.” She expects that there are, especially since he’s mentioned that her arrival has saved him a trip to her home.
@[Jesper]
It’s a fox, she soon sees, silvery and difficult to see in the sunlit snow. It is fitting in this environment, Lepis thinks, but the way that it approaches her suggests that it is no true canine. There is a horse there somewhere, a sentient creature behind those sharp eyes, and it is to them that the dun mare bobs her head in a polite greeting. She has little experience conversing with foxes, and the body language that he uses goes unread; she knows only that he’s come close enough to speak, and speak he does.
His voice is the same, she finds, whether spoken around flat equine teeth or pointed canines, and the tobiano pegasus confirms her suspicion that yes: this shifter is Jesper, the leader of this frozen island.
“It’s been a while,” she says, and wonders how clearly the vulpine creature recalls their last meeting. She’d been less than hospitable, she recalls, defending Sylva to her fellow captive. Of course, she’d still been in denial then, refusing to acknowledge that the autumn kingdom was as much her prison as her home. The beatings hadn’t started yet, she remembers suddenly; they’d started after the black stallion had returned to his then-home of Ischia. Her wings had still been unbroken then, and the navy haired mare pulls them tighter to her body at the memory, as much an effort to reassure herself they are still undamaged as to warm herself from the chill that skips along her spine.
Truthfully, she has not given the stallion much thought in the time that has passed since. Only her son’s news – that Sabrina had lost her challenge to Jesper – had even informed her that the stallion was living in and leading her neighboring territory. Lepis is without spies on the frozen island, and is unaware that the fox in front of her has been so recently briefed on the goings on of her home. Had she been, she would have been eager to correct information that was more bias than fact, knowledge tainted by the feelings of a roan stallion who prides himself on being exceptionally irritating.
“Oh I don’t plan on staying long,” she replies to his quip about being prepared for the cold, but its said with a smile at the edges of her navy mouth. “I only wanted to come and say hello, to learn what you’d be willing to tell me about how Icicle Isle fares, and to see if there was anything you might want to know about Taiga.” She expects that there are, especially since he’s mentioned that her arrival has saved him a trip to her home.
@[Jesper]
