Covering all your wounds; Lepis

[Lepis]

lepis, comtesse of taiga RUN AND TELL ALL OF THE ANGELS; THIS COULD TAKE ALL NIGHT i think i need a devil to help me get things right As she lifts her hooves with each step forward, the bittersweet scent of pine rises, released from the blanket of snow. It is a scent she knows well, one that lies thickly on the residents of this wood. She had once thought that it smelled of home, and perhaps it had. Once, for a time, but not for too much longer. The tobiano Comtesse has made no final decision – will not until she has spoken to several others – but there is little doubt in her mind which she will choose. The sharp scent comes now with a bite of poignancy, and without true conscious thought the dun mare shields herself from any thoughts but those relevant to this conversation. “You would like to be friends?” Lepis asks. It is the timing that surprises her, not the idea idea.  After all, if ever there were a creature determined to forge friendships, it would be Ilma. The snow white mare had worked herself (worked them both, truly) to frustration at their first meeting, utterly determined to hammer out an understanding. Lepis has grown since her captivity in Hyaline, grown more stubborn, but more patient too. More willing to play the long game, and more able to see the game played by others. It never becomes any easier to see their goals, of course, but the willingness to wait out the discovery has been a long-cultivated art. She’d repeated Ilma’s statement, making it a question, though they each know her query was rhetorical. She does not question what Ilma had said, but rather the intent behind it. Lepis is uninterested in being hammered at a second time, not by a blacksmith so blinded by a final goal that he does not look to see what material he crafts with or how they have been worked over before him. “Why now?” The Comtesse adds. She has not heard Ilma’s named tied to any land in years, and it is only at this pinnacle of change that she arrives. Her expression is simple curiosity, matched by that in her voice. There are other emotions, but they swirl and eddy behind that internal wall she has set, in no danger of breaking through. Two weeks of nothing has prepared Lepis for that, after all, even if not in the way she had hoped. @[Ilma]