01-20-2021, 08:17 PM
She smelled him before she heard him thanks to the wind's direction. Young, male, active. Her ear flicks in discomfort. She wondered if her first interaction here would be with a child. But when the gaited sound of the approacher's hooves befell her ears, Alyssa realized that despite his youth, the stallion coming up opposite her was of age. Her ear flicked again.
Hello, the stranger said. I'm Oren. The sound of his name seemed pleasing so Alyssa rolled it around in her mouth in silence, feeling the twin syllables to compliment how she'd just heard it said. I'm from Taiga! Her brow furrows at this. What is Taiga? She pondered; her mother spoke of places such as the Gates, the Desserts, the Valley. No mention of a place called Taiga. But Alyssa bit her tongue as a surprising amount of questions built up in her throat, listening instead to the young stallion's next words.
Are you okay? What with the darkness and all?
With that, every question and thought contained by Alyssa's zipped away into remote, inaccessible recesses of her mind. The sound of some others roaming about in the darkness filled the void her silence provided as she felt her tongue turn to ash in her mouth. Even trying to figure out why such a simple question silenced her so felt impossible; the harder she tried, the more she felt incapable.
At long last, a light appeared in the Oren's mane. Its peculiarity there, amidst the ever-darkness, unlatched a single avenue of thought in Alyssa's mind, and before she could question herself back into shut down, she ran with it.
"You have a bug in your hair," she states in a flat voice. Her face contorts into an expression of displeasure and embarrassment at her social inadequacy (had she really been scared of speaking to a child?), the expression fully realized as she believed the darkness to hide the details of her features. She dropped her orange eyes away from the shape of Oren anyway, ears tipping back to her skull.
Sinking deep into a pit of self-blame, Alyssa relinquished her grasp on the small hope she'd had of making it on her own out in the real world and allowed her words to come without thought. Though, they also came with a big sigh. "I'm fine, thanks. The darkness hasn't tried to eat me yet so I can't complain."
@[Oren]
Hello, the stranger said. I'm Oren. The sound of his name seemed pleasing so Alyssa rolled it around in her mouth in silence, feeling the twin syllables to compliment how she'd just heard it said. I'm from Taiga! Her brow furrows at this. What is Taiga? She pondered; her mother spoke of places such as the Gates, the Desserts, the Valley. No mention of a place called Taiga. But Alyssa bit her tongue as a surprising amount of questions built up in her throat, listening instead to the young stallion's next words.
Are you okay? What with the darkness and all?
With that, every question and thought contained by Alyssa's zipped away into remote, inaccessible recesses of her mind. The sound of some others roaming about in the darkness filled the void her silence provided as she felt her tongue turn to ash in her mouth. Even trying to figure out why such a simple question silenced her so felt impossible; the harder she tried, the more she felt incapable.
At long last, a light appeared in the Oren's mane. Its peculiarity there, amidst the ever-darkness, unlatched a single avenue of thought in Alyssa's mind, and before she could question herself back into shut down, she ran with it.
"You have a bug in your hair," she states in a flat voice. Her face contorts into an expression of displeasure and embarrassment at her social inadequacy (had she really been scared of speaking to a child?), the expression fully realized as she believed the darkness to hide the details of her features. She dropped her orange eyes away from the shape of Oren anyway, ears tipping back to her skull.
Sinking deep into a pit of self-blame, Alyssa relinquished her grasp on the small hope she'd had of making it on her own out in the real world and allowed her words to come without thought. Though, they also came with a big sigh. "I'm fine, thanks. The darkness hasn't tried to eat me yet so I can't complain."
@[Oren]