Keeper-
Concentric rings spread out and widen from where she had knocked the pebble into the water after it’s companion had long since sunk to the bottom.
There is something mesmerizing about watching these rings and ripples that both the mares seem to share, even though her reflection is now wavering next to the other mare’s and she has finally taken notice of Keeper standing beside her. Her reaction is not one that Keeper would have anticipated; she had made enough noise to make anyone aware of her presence but the red mare still acts startled. She seems to recover quickly enough with a bright smile that blazes across her mouth and a light quick laugh that doesn’t send Keeper shying off from her. Not that Keeper does those kinds of things, just if the chestnut mare had reacted snidely then she might have put a little space between them until sussing out the cause for such unnecessary meanness. But there is no meanness here, just a quick and easy companionship spawned from watching the ripples in the river.
“Sorry,” she offers by way of unsolicited apology. It seemed the natural thing to do for having startled the red unintentionally even though Keeper is not always a quiet moving mare. She can be loud as a clatter of rocks down a mountainside if she needed to be and other times, she could track and creep with the best of them if she put her mind to it. Most of the time, Keeper just moved and took no notice of the rest - she was, and often thought she was one with the world as much as a horse like her could be. Keeper brightens; “Nope, not lonely now!” both the pebble and the mare had companions, because she - Keeper - had seen to that!
She is rather blithe even beneath the explorative lips of the red mare that touch her shoulder and the warm breath that blows across her dunskin fur. Keeper knows the mare is breathing in her wild earthy smell and she can smell the mare in kind, horsy and alive but somehow not wholly of this place like Keeper has come to smell so strongly of Hyaline and her travels between it and the common lands. She either smells of mountains, forests, meadows or fields. Seasonal changes affect her scent too, sweat from the sun is stronger in summer and she smells more woolly and warm in the winter. Keeper notices this things, as most don’t beyond smelling like a horse or in this world, half a horse and half something else altogether.
(Like Keeper will soon smell, more musky like a bear. A smell she won’t ever be able to shake because she has been changed since her participation in a quest that left her rather… different. For now though, she is free of that bear-taint as she basks in the red mare’s pleasant presence.)
The little dunskin chuckles; “Always and probably far too long. My father jokes that I’m more wild than the rest of the family is or can be. Grandmother accepts it though, says that’s just how I was meant to be - wilder than the rest.” It never occurs to Keeper that the red mare doesn’t know who her father is, or her grandmother - they have names, but none that fall in the annals of Beqanna’s vast and storied histories, few of which even Keeper knows. “I’ve never left though… never ventured towards the horizon and sought what lay behind it. Have you?” She can guess that perhaps the chestnut has because she smells of here but as if from long ago, the smell is a bit faded - lingering, but faded, and she smells mostly of dust and long travel.
Oh, introductions. Keeper never seems to quite get around to those early on in the conversations she has. They tend to crop up later when she’s already decided whether or not the horse she’s with will be an immediate friend (she’s never had one not be, so she has no true experience with dislike or meanness - they exist, because like and niceness do, but Keeper is rather stunted in those areas of social interaction) and the names just come later, after all of that. But the red is practiced, skillful even in a rather diplomatic way that must have been learned and in part, bred into her nature as it was not in Keeper’s at all.
(How in the hell did she get a promotion in Hyaline then? Things like that just befuddle her because she does nothing but seek interactions with other horses because horses are creatures of herd and habit.)
“No need to apologize, I never seem to get around to introductions fast enough. Names always come later, they just have a way of coming out.” It is her way of apologizing and explaining in the same breath, followed by a laugh that is light and quick in the way it tumbles out of her grinning mouth. “I’m Keeper and it’s a pleasure to meet you. Shame the pebbles couldn’t stay longer to introduce themselves.” she adds with a delightful little cackle of mirth.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless
ooc: um sorry, got a little carried away with rambling there lol <333