He only ever seemed to leave the swamp for two reasons.
1. If he was summoned to a meeting of some sort, in which case he decided he had better pack up and do what he was told rather than sit around and get in trouble for not responding to the call.
2. If he was hungry and swamp fruits just weren't cutting it anymore.
This was more of a case of the latter, and just like the previous times he had skulked out here, he had to restrain himself from groaning in near ecstasy at the taste of proper grass. Fruits were sweet and delicious, but they were more like treats, desserts, than proper food. And while he could easily survive off of the vegetation that coiled up around the trunks of the trees and sprouted from the peat, it was hardly very appetizing. While his body could make do, and technically speaking, he never had to leave the safety of the murk and the heat, even his ever-present nerves could only keep him bound to that place for so long before the need to eat something more fulfilling bid him to leave his comfort zone.
It was chilly, and snow seemed intent of fluttering down from the sky and soaking into his already matted coat, making him now messy, and cold. Fucking great.
He supposed, that on the bright side, he was a bit cleaner than he had been before. The clean water of the snow melt that ran down his form washing off some of the gunk that clung to his coat, even if only a little. He wasn't so beautiful with the flakes that attached themselves to his form, instead looking rather miserable. An embodiment of the swamplands so rudely covered with frost.
He grumbled his frustrations quietly under his breath as he nosed the snow aside, digging for the tastier morsels to be found below the cold and frozen flakes. Sure, they were fairly deadened at this point, but Vespera did they still taste better than the prickly leaves he had been eating the past few days, unable to stomach the sweetness of the fruits any longer.
He was making something of a trail in the snow, in a multitude of ways. There was the pattern of his hoofsteps as he walked, leaving interspersed imprints from every step. There was the trail of exposed earth, cleared of grass by his jaws and the trail forged by his nose as he pushed his way through the snow in search of more to eat. And even a light trail of dark stains on the pristine snow, markers from where the melting flakes that landed on his back had washed down his form, becoming filthy with the muck on his form and dripping down their dirty water to create small, dark spots in the clear whiteness below.
Dusk had been... gracious enough to allow her in, despite the fact she felt no pull to the supposed deities of the lands. Those she worshiped were in nature and the winds, not in far off places looking down at the people as if they were better. Nature was, and always would be, her mistress. A comforting presence of many gods and goddesses that joined together, that helped life prosper, involving themselves in everything they could. She had her beliefs, and the people here had theirs.
Crux flicked her ears as she walked, hooves dipping in to snow, hearing the soft crunch underneath of her weight, the give of it, the hard ground underneath. Father winter was cold this year, bringing with him sharp and biting winds that had almost given her nose frostbite at one point, though she had managed to salvage something to help heal the tissue. A shake of her head was given, the wavy curls of her mane dropping back over her nape and between her ears, tucked warmly in place.
It wasn't until there was someone nearby that she stopped her walk, golden eyes lifting up and her head following suit as a single hoof remained suspended in the air in front of her. "Hello?" Her voice was unusually husky, and she stepped forward almost cautiously toward the one that had come in to her line of sight. It was as if she were approaching some sort of wild animal, instead of another horse, and her step was slow, steady, speckled legs moving with a sure motion.
He, for once, heard the approach of company before they spoke and frightened him out of his wits. The sound of hooffalls in snow was rather audible, the crystals crunching quite distinctly. He hadn't had anything to much distract him as the sound approached either, having only been softly nosing through the snow.
It wasn't very loud out, the snowfall quiet and soft, and his own search very gentle and keeping quite a hush over the land. As such, the crunching of an approach was quite noticeable to him, and his ears perked up to hear it just as he exposed a potential mouthful. As he could hear the person coming, he still felt the familiar blanket of fear and the nervousness of social interaction begin to weave it's way into his mind, but he was better prepared for it.
The approach wasn't fast, wasn't sudden, it just sounded like someone walking, a little slowly even, like each step was measured and sure. It gave him a moment of time.
So he took the moment to snag the crumpled blades of grass from beneath the frost and pull them into his mouth, chewing as he turned his gaze upwards to meet whomever was headed his way.
"Hello?"
His first thought was to nervously take a step back, clearing his way from the path he had made as he seemed to retreat in on himself just the slightest.
The brilliant yellow of the mare's eyes were intense against the darkness of her face, and distantly reminded him of some great wildcat, looking out with hunter yellow orbs from the darkness of the shadows. The comparison did little to help his mood, the man chewing fitfully before thickly swallowing the morsel he had taken into himself, tongue slipping out to lightly dance over his lips, eyes flicking to and fro for a moment before returning to the mare who had approached him.
Other than the eyes and darkness of her visage that uncomfortably made him think of old stories of large cats more than half the size of a horse that skulked in the shadows, she had little to her. More darkness dancing around her hooves, and lightness to her body, speckles of darkness flicking over her legs like splattered shadows.
She had no great terrors to her form, and by all rights she should have looked harmless. The huskiness to her voice was peculiar, but nothing too much so. She could have simply not spoken for a time, and thus found her voice rather estranged from her.
But he still took another step back, quickly trying to change the nervous gesture into lightly toying with the snow with his hoof, like he was just fidgeting, not afraid. His wandering eyes and nervous ears betrayed him. He had already made the mental comparison to a hunter, and even if he hushed at his Anxiety that it wasn't anything to be concerned about, his brain still latched onto the thought and ran with it, causing a pervading sense of worry and fear throughout his form even when his mind could offer no solid validation for the feeling.
It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been though, and he could work with this level of unease. This was manageable.
He could try to at least maintain some composure this time around, unlike pretty much every single one of his other meetings.
"H-Hello..."
He was ready to leave it at that, but some part of his mind bucked at that idea, protesting that that would just leave the conversation hanging awkwardly in the air. If he was going to attempt a proper conversation he better do it right. It took him a moment to search his mind, before he managed to find something to say.
"What... brings you, here?"
The pauses in his statement were very unnatural and not at all easygoing, but hey, he tried. Points for effort. And besides, it was an improvement over his usual shtick of screaming.
