12-28-2015, 10:43 AM
Mandan can feel the stallion’s stare and it should unnerve him but doesn’t, he is used to them staring at the oddity in their midst - the horned beast, him. He almost chuckles, still boyish but somehow not (his mating of Ygritte has aged him, changed him, made him older and somehow less a colt), and replies kindly, “They’re horns.” and he talks like he’s talking to a curious little brother, except Mandan was Scalped’s last foal (for now anyway, that he knows of, because he certainly doesn’t know that his mother has returned and grows thick with foal like Ygritte does) so he’s never really had a little brother. “No need to apologize,” he says, easing up his possessiveness of the bay mare at his side as he relaxes around Farran. His mate beside him is in a mischievous mood, he can feel it in the air between them; instead, she settles her head upon his back and the weight of it is a familiar anchor in this moment, he almost sighs happily but the sigh dies in his throat as he remembers their present company. “I’m Mandan,” he says as if by way of explanation. Ygritte’s breath blows warmly on his neck, stirring little stray hairs of black mane; he cranes his head around to lip at her breast lovingly, nibbling the crease between her forelegs before his head comes up and he looks at the stallion still there in their midst, “You seem to like it here very much.” Not that Mandan can say much about himself, but he likes the trees and the quiet roar of the Falls even if he’s not quite as waterlogged as the two of them.
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