06-30-2017, 09:23 PM
Femur scoffs, but they can’t see it.
“Afraid? Hardly.” The scorn is apparent in her voice. She is not afraid but cautious, because there is foul magic afoot and she can sense it as much as she knew when to avoid her father and his peculiar hunger for the fear he could inspire and suck out of others. Or the way she learned to avoid her mother’s chiding nips despite the fact that she had no fangs to make the bites more painful like Femur does. No, she is not afraid of water and the thing in its midst but she is mindful of its presence and its power and it is not a thing to be lightly trifled with like the painted colt seems of a mind to do since he takes a step then another, entranced less by her invisible state and more by the water and what it wields.
Still invisible but more mindful now of the tendrils of water that seek to touch and flesh her out, and the muck underfoot that would belie the prints her hooves would sink deep into it, she moves a few feet to the left and just back of the bank as it slopes down to the river. She thinks this is a wise but imperfect stratagem to keep the water-horse at bay - she doesn’t quite think the way it looks at her, thoughtful and frowning, is any less predatory than the way a wolf eyes a potential meal. Her own thought of him being predatory is confirmed the moment he sends out watery feelers that search for the slender low portions of her legs, things to grab onto and make visible…
The water pauses and she realizes that he is distracted by the other colt; this distraction makes the water-horse reveal himself in shades of pearl and evergreen - almost pretty, she thinks, but gives a small shake of her head to dispel such thoughts - wolves are pretty too, but no less dangerous, she reminds herself. She laughs; “Fear does not suit any of us now does it?” Femur would smile but she conceals her fangs beneath that cloak of invisibility that she so easily wears. No, she’d not make this easy for either of them in this dangerous game they play at. Granted, they had but to use their noses and sniff her out like the very wolves she keeps comparing them to but sometimes, as horses, they forget their own basic instincts and rely heavily upon their gifts.
“What if there is no fear left in me for you to feed on?”
She half-guesses at this; there is something the look of the pied green-and-white colt that reminds her of her father, the original Krampus. How can she fear him now? He might pull her under but something tells her he won’t, not fully - he might maim, might make her less trusting than she already is, less quick to tangle and flash her fangs at them but something tells her he just can’t do it, not like her father could or would. Still, she does not tempt him further but she is curious as to why he thinks fear does not become her. If it is not fear he seeks, then what? The struggle? The thrill of the kill? Her own eyes narrow, considering.