He didn't hear the sloshing of the water as the other approached for the sweetness that flooded his tongue as he successfully nabbed another in his mouth. Sure, he could always just break a bunch of them off with telekinesis and save himself the trouble, but where was the fun in that? Where was the challenge? He had seen a challenge, and accepted it accordingly. He would not back down from this one.
It was impossible to not smell the scent of flowers in such an environment, but he mistook it for the passing odor of plants, and not a sign of company. It wasn't as though flowers did not grow here. His nose twitched, but it bothered him not.
However, another impossible thing to miss, was the sound of a voice. And unlike the scent of flowers, this could not be passed off as not signaling company.
"Would you be so kind as to get me one too? Court business can be frightfully hungry work."
His lips were actually just encompassing one of the fruits when the question was proposed, and the end result of his startled head turn was almost comical in some aspects. A young stallion braced against a tree in a fairly undignified fashion, brows furrowed and ears cocked with confusion, fruit half hanging from his mouth. Some distant part of his subconscious rolled its eyes and murmured that he ought to eat the damn fruit or spit it out, don't just hold it there.
He did.
Just before it fully set in that he wasn't alone.
He had been relaxed, so the anxiety was both easier and more difficult to deal with. Easier in that it wasn't as strong as it could have easily been had he already been on edge, harder in that he wasn't prepared for it, meaning that while weaker, it's effect was much more profound.
The woman seemed more preoccupied with her own thoughts for the moment, and while the brown stallion was too busy feeling the sudden rising surge of terror to react much, she approached, and he felt her flesh brush against his, and it did absolutely nothing whatsoever to help calm the rising tide of fear, even as the woman seemed to glance over at him with a smirk(?).
"Not to mention boring."
First, what was she talking about again? He must have missed her words for the sound of her voice. Sort of like missing the forest for the trees. Or would it be missing the trees for the forest since in this instance he had been too focused on the big picture to see the details? Ah, semantics.
Second,
"AAAHHHHHH!!!"
The man suddenly kicked off the tree with his forehooves, said limbs flailing as he screeched in a mixture of terror and left over shock from the stranger's sudden arrival. Unfortunately for him, the kick had been a little too strong, sending the man standing only on his hindlegs dangerously off balance. He teetered, forehooves pawing frantically at the air in front of him as he stepped back with a hindleg, meant to be an attempt to give him balance and re-orient himself so that he was now faced towards the woman in his whole body, instead of having his legs awkwardly facing the tree while his torso and head tried to face the woman. Fortunately, the act did work as intended, and momentarily restored what normally would have been enough balance for him to drop to the ground on all fours as opposed to falling.
Unfortunately, he was still suffering from the effects of the great momentum he had pushed himself off with as well as flailing limbs and so it just wasn't enough this time.
All he knew was that moments later, the stallion suddenly found himself hitting the ground with a distressed 'oof!' and a wince, all four limbs now hanging uselessly in the air. He blinked, the cause of his anxiety and shock momentarily forgotten as he simply stared at the swamp's canopy, blinking stupidly once more. The flailing and fall had made him a little dizzy, and his brain was more preoccupied with 'how did I end up on my back?' than anything else.
The simple fact that he was startled by the fall was enough to momentarily keep his mind pre-occupied and therefore, both unresponsive to and distracted from the woman whom he had been speaking to.
@
OOC: This was supposed to go more seriously than this, with him just being scared and tossing her one in the hopes that she'll leave him alone. I write this character so much though that repeating the same scenario gets boring after a time and so random shit happens. Once wolf Auru fell off a giant-ass mushroom. It was... interesting.
