Malik has had two childhoods, been raised in two different ways.
He is the child of Wishbone, raised as a member of Tephra’s ruling family (an impressively large group, full of smiling and friendly faces). Malik had been well loved and well-educated, with time spent learning not only the lands and histories of Beqanna, but how to make and hold the diplomatic bonds that keep them together. The purple mare had taught him the benefits of a silver tongue and how to read faces, and so Malik recognizes the brightness of the second chance appear in the young stranger’s face as she describes her morning flight.
From Tephra, she says, and there is not even a flicker of a reaction from the black stallion. Diplomatic lessons, or perhaps a remnant of his second childhood. He’d not been given lessons, but Gale and Mazikeen had made him observant, ever watchful for the shifting of emotions that might precede a violent explosion. Her frustration is brief and self-directed, never enough to concern him, and he’s smiling when she looks up after explaining that she talks too much.
“It was nice to walk,” he replies, “and to hear about your flight as well.”
That she returns to her mission - finding the black and green queen - quickly does not surprise him, but he knows nothing of her missing monarch. “My cousin met a pair of Loessians looking for survivors, a grey stallion and a…” here he trails off with a faint smile, recalling better what his cousin had said of the amethyst-eyed daughter. “Hmm, perhaps a you, I think.” So she has been searching for quite a while then, with no news at all. “But nothing else, I’m afraid.”
@Areane
He is the child of Wishbone, raised as a member of Tephra’s ruling family (an impressively large group, full of smiling and friendly faces). Malik had been well loved and well-educated, with time spent learning not only the lands and histories of Beqanna, but how to make and hold the diplomatic bonds that keep them together. The purple mare had taught him the benefits of a silver tongue and how to read faces, and so Malik recognizes the brightness of the second chance appear in the young stranger’s face as she describes her morning flight.
From Tephra, she says, and there is not even a flicker of a reaction from the black stallion. Diplomatic lessons, or perhaps a remnant of his second childhood. He’d not been given lessons, but Gale and Mazikeen had made him observant, ever watchful for the shifting of emotions that might precede a violent explosion. Her frustration is brief and self-directed, never enough to concern him, and he’s smiling when she looks up after explaining that she talks too much.
“It was nice to walk,” he replies, “and to hear about your flight as well.”
That she returns to her mission - finding the black and green queen - quickly does not surprise him, but he knows nothing of her missing monarch. “My cousin met a pair of Loessians looking for survivors, a grey stallion and a…” here he trails off with a faint smile, recalling better what his cousin had said of the amethyst-eyed daughter. “Hmm, perhaps a you, I think.” So she has been searching for quite a while then, with no news at all. “But nothing else, I’m afraid.”
@Areane