[open] you can keep your black tongue; any

[Padme]

Padme isn’t particularly social, like her stone-mannered mother, but unlike her freckled maternal guardian – she isn’t quite sour to a little pleasant company, either. When the mare approaches there is a fleeting instant where the mother’s dark ears flatten into her black hair, a warning, but the polite hello and a smile softens Pad’s demeanor right away. This stranger means no obvious threat, she soothes herself, touching her nose to her skittish child. She is cautious still, as any diligent mother should be, especially for the first baby, but she is not overly dramatic about it. Her expression isn’t exactly warm, but she isn’t snarling, or scowling, nodding after the mare adds to her hello.

“It can’t hurt, right?” this breaks her ambiguous look and she chuckles, cracking a smile. “It’s been so long since I’ve been in anyone’s company at all – when you hear noises in the darkness, you don’t stop to see if it is friendly..” she laughs again, light, subconsciously bumping her muzzle against her baby again before she continues. “I did not, anyway.” she smirks, bring her head up from the ginger newborn to level her gaze with the stranger. “I’m Padme, this is Mourna.” when her daughter’s name leaves her lips it melts just a little.

If she could sense at all the mourning in the mare before her it would cause much more delicacy. But she has no such magic, she is not sensitive to the mare’s inner pangs of pain, or the gutting feeling she gets when looking upon a healthy newborn. Padme hasn’t had such a pain in her life, and the thought doesn’t cross her mind, she is only proud to show the mare her child. At some point Pad thinks she may see a heaviness, a sadness, in the mare’s gaze when she looks at Mourna, but her brain dismisses it, it does not recognize it. Someday she may make this connection, showing a mourning mother a new child, but for now she is oblivious and only stupidly beaming.

PADMÉ & MOURNA
the high black water, the devil's daughter

8

this one hurt me to write a little D:
@[Ciri]