The days are endless, cold, one into another just white and gray and evergreen. She has never loved winter but this is the coldest of her life, lonely, empty. The child in her belly is at times the only fire burning against oblivion and it is yet a small flame that barely stirs beneath her ribs. Even when her every moment is altered by it’s presence, she will require more to survive than all the hopes that are wrapped up in the innocent promise of an infant. There are those who have tried to give her comfort but she pushes them back, refuses kindness undeserved.

In the meadow she digs for acorns at the forest’s edge. There are plenty of acorns at home but they are buried deep in the alpine snow and she will find herself with assistance from one of her children or someone else. She cannot tolerate the helpfulness or kindness today, and she has yet to turn on her friends so in this mood she exiles herself from home. The digging is an almost pleasant exertion and the monotony of it turns her thoughts to a base quiet, reward and work and little else. Until she moves on to find a new trove of treasures and has her attention captured by a naked winter-berry heavy with is beautiful crimson fruit.

Kensa draws near the poison shrub, inspecting it absently. Though she reaches out to touch the berries she has no intention of eating a single one. She knows them to be a bitter poison. Still she has always been a tactile creature, eager to touch and know even when she should not. From there her eyes—topaz cabochons—flick to the dark shape of a stranger, a lovely cold thing. Made of winter in the same intangible way that Kensa is made of summer. In spite of all the emptiness that the chestnut has poured into herself she has a fleeting appreciative thought that sticks in her mind and makes her stare too long.

It is not often that she is the one standing in place and staring. Though she frequently turns an openly interested look on strangers that catch her eye, her attention span tends to be short. There is something about this other woman that is just different enough to hold her attention, to make it tumble to a stop, really. “Hello.” The greeting is off her lips before she realizes it, the syllables clean and clear, if a little surprised. Kensa is often the first to approach, charming and direct, disarmingly down-to-earth despite her appearance. Usually she is off and going in a conversation before the object of her interest can manage to process that she’s hurled her name at them or even taken their eyes off the gold freckling her skin.

“I’m Kensa. I was staring.” This introduction is followed shortly by a bemused confession. It is her turn to step nearer and her sturdy limbs bring her within reach of the other mare, so that she might reach out and greet her. The chestnut only offers her muzzle to the tall stranger rather than pressing in to touch like she once might have. Physical connection no longer feels as simple or effortless, not to mention it is too fraught. She’s lost too much, destroyed too much in the last year to feel comfortable with herself or the influence of her beauty.  These thoughts have no place in a simple meeting like this and she pushes them back, not entirely sure why they bare on her now except that the differences between the dark mare and herself are an attractant of sorts.

Drawing her chin in the small sabino tips an ear to the side, listening to a pair of chickadees that have claimed the winter-berry in her absence. Her eyes remain on the wintry-woman, calm but curious. “I am from Hyaline. To the north. The mountains. Where have you come from?”

It is no novelty to be stared at, or even to have her company’s behavior hobbled or speech stilted. It has become familiar, the disarray that spreads out around her like a shockwave, and it is easy to mistake Melinoë’s awkward greeting for a recovery from Kensa’s own oddity. The sabino Primarch understands herself to appear a bit alien to some, a shock to the system and she has grown used to giving them time to orient themselves. She does not imagine that her company does not expect a greeting to involve the capturing of scents (Kensa’s of opium and alpine air) or sense that Melinoë is anything other than what she appears to be.

—as far south as one could get. Another might turn their head to seek the southern horizon with their eyes but Kensa knows there is nothing there but the sea cliffs and vast water separating their continent from everywhere else. The blue maned woman is not from the South of Beqanna, but some other distant place. At the word banishment Kensa’s brow takes on a concerned stitch but she does not wear a look of pity or fear.

“There are no doubt worse places to be banished than this. You will stay a while?” Of course Kensa’s question comes across as hopeful rather than detachedly curious and the tired parts of her are annoyed by it. Certainly Kensa ought to have learned by now to wear her cold and careful face whenever possible, but she is drawn out-of-doors by some intangible mystery and shows herself once more. Curious, kind, hungry for life. It is a strange turn of events that has someone like her so interested in the company of a being like Melinoë, but of course Kensa hasn’t the slightest idea who she’s speaking with. She knows only that there is something here she does not understand, and that the other woman’s blue eyes seem brighter in the company of her like-colored forelock.
Realizing that her earlier statement might be tone-deaf considering that Melinoë is in fact banished from the home she has always known, Kensa frowns at herself thoughtfully before she asks “It isn’t too uncomfortable here...in comparison to where you came from?” She does not exactly mean the weather, or the terrain, or even the people of Beqanna. Of course they have only just met, and whatever the blue-black mare’s answer may be Kensa does not expect her to divulge anything at all,  she only means to acknowledge her loss and offer an ear.