Keeper-
Caves are secret things and Keeper likes secret things.
She has never really explored caves though. None of the deer herds she followed had ever chosen to wait out a storm or birth their fawns inside them. They preferred thickets of crushed grass that held the shape of their bodies long after they had gotten up and moved on. Or trees that dripped fat raindrops passed their noses until the clouds cleared and the sun came out again. Deer did not take kindly to dark places like caves.
Keeper has the barest knowledge of caves but never once has she explored one.
Something about the press and the hush of the dark around her makes her think she ought to. If she strains her ears enough, she thinks she can hear a constant drip of water from somewhere within. There might be an underground river that bubbled up cold and clear from between the stones. Or maybe the cave held an underground lake in her dark arms - the possibilities were endless! But also enticing enough to almost pull her forward another step through the vines until he shushes her from the nearby dark, nearer than she realized.
She could not hear the beat of his own heart because hers has begun to thump just as wildly inside her pale dun breast. It hammers hard enough against her ribcage to drown out all other sound in her ears until she practices slow breath after slow breath and her heart starts to slow down again. It had sped up in a mixture of fear and surprise to realize that he had been so close to her this whole time. So close! Close enough that she can make out the thick rumple of forelock down his face - long hair to match a long nose, and the blue of his eye nearest to her that seems more bioluminescent than brilliant. That blue has a glow to it that is unearthly and beautiful, something she has never seen before except in the green fungi that creep slow along the trunks of trees and over the humped hard backs of rocks.
Then -
He answers her. No, echoes her. It is enough though, a beginning of sorts that she leaps on like a cougar hungering for more though her smile is anything but predatory as it finds her lips in the dark and the smallest shred of moonlight that throws itself across her face and his. Her smile is kind, stretching from end to end across her mouth and there is a hint of happiness in it that he has responded back to her not that she ever considered he might have been a mute. However, he seems a bit… nervous?
No, she’s seen no eye-roll, no flare of nostrils, nor does the white of his eyes show - only that blue, brazen and bright, but she senses that he is far quieter for some other reason than she can discern. It makes her tilt her head to the side as she considers him, considers saying something else that makes her mouth open then close back up in the tiniest of frowns. The quiet he keeps seems not to be one of reverence for the cave but for something else, someone else mayhap? She lifts her head up higher and sniffs the air, there is another scent - another horse! He’s not alone here!
That surprises her further and her head falls back to be level with his as she looks him then gestures with a flip of her nose over his shoulder as if to say you’re not alone? It strikes her that that might be why he is quiet and nervous. Is the other unkind? Keeper has never had an encounter like this before and she is not afraid for herself but perhaps a bit afraid for the repercussions he might suffer for her coming here and having discovered him - no, them, and all of this. Her face grows apologetic and she gestures towards the space just outside the cave-mouth. Would he dare follow her there? Just outside, where it might be safer for conversation in soft tones?
Keeper can only hope so.
She wants to know more about him, wants to uncover the secret that he is.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless