A personality not easily unnerved, Claudius finds it especially disturbing when the sight of Vindictive's grin sets his hair on end. He watches her through the lens of exercise, feeling the swirling black anger in his belly hardening into a knot of anxiety and agitation. There's something . . . something imperative that she lacks. Was it an emptiness in her grin? An eerie echo in her words? But he can't pinpoint what's off while exerting himself so intensely, and that persistent anger from his nightmare makes him forget everything but whatever distracts him.
The shark's grin Vindictive wears is enough to deflect his concerns.
Picking up the pace and drawing on the supernatural stamina his heart gifts him, Claudius quickly begins to close the remaining distance between him and the waning mare. He draws shoulder to shoulder with her, not looking or saying anything for the few moments their hooves fall into a matching rhythm. Then -
"I don't run from anything."
Chest heaving, Claudius pushes his pace even faster, snow and hardened dirt flying in his wake. Surely she mustn't know of the nightmare that woke him? The father he once ran from? Is that what unsettled him moments before? The foreign touch of a mind-reader's probing? The chestnut stallion curls his lip in a silent growl, launching forward in a burst of angry energy before swerving to the left in an attempt to cut Vindictive off.
Whether they collide or she stops in time, Claudius asks through weighted breath, "Why - would you run - from life?"