Rannveig, Florentine, and now this one.
He reacted in a similar fashion to her approach as he had the others.
What was it with brightly colored women and sneaking up on him?
"The swamp is hardly a place to wander, are you alright?"
He froze in place, brain taking the split second it took her to speak to process the situation, before an instinctive reaction set in, and the man shrieked in fright at the unexpected approach. Unlike some of his previous moments, however, he managed to stay on his hooves, even as he leapt a foot in the air. He came back down and stumbled, yes, but he didn't completely fall over. He distantly supposed that was an improvement if nothing else.
Ignoring the twinging in his hoof, he spun around, ears back and teeth bared as he came face to face with a pegasus of a brilliant and lightly colored coat. Well, not so much face to face, as she still stood a short distance away, but so that they were both now facing one another.
Copper eyes met vermilion as he took note of the woman standing on the highest ground she could reach, a flurry of thoughts flitting through his mind one after the other. To intimidate him? To simply get as far away from the bog as possible? To give herself the better vantage point with which to attack? He couldn't decide, and unbidden, a small whimper whined in the back of his throat, nearly inaudible to him, despite being right there, but present nonetheless.
What did she want from him?
She had said something, after all it was her voice that had startled him. But for the life of him he couldn't recall the words.
She hadn't sounded aggressive, it had been the suddenness of her speech that frightened him so, not the tone nor the words. Even if he couldn't stop the traitorous whispers that murmured their 'what if's. What if she was simply acting non threatening to get him relaxed so that she could attack with less resistance? What if she had been telling him to get out of her swamp and he simply hadn't heard? What if she had been asking him for directions so as how to best attack Dusk Court? What if... What if...
He needed to respond before she thought him mad.
Are you not?
But he couldn't remember what she had said (asked?).
So he did the best he could, given the situation.
"E-Eh?"
Can't even manage a simply 'pardon', or 'excuse me'. How do you ever expect to manage to fit into court life?
True, but he had been here for nearly a year, and had spent the whole time huddled in the swamplands. There wasn't much 'fitting in' available to him at this point.
@Israfel
