elif
Elif catches the cut of that keen gaze on her, the mottled blue and gold of the near eye like a marble or a planet. The other, she is intrigued to find, is as gold as Solterran sand; she does not see the third, or know enough to look for it. The dark-red bay had not always taken the greatest interest in her fellow Solterrans - it had been the hunt with Solis to change that, however anticlimactic the results.
Not, as it were, unlike the maze.
“O,” she responds, though it might have been oh. Either way she smiles, quick as a struck match, utterly unbothered by the sharpness in the other’s voice. Elif has grown up amidst all the desert things, the cacti with their barbs and spines and the canyons with their hot hard walls. She has long since learned not to be offended by the sun-scorched tempers that surround her.
“A dead end is one way to describe it,” she answers dryly, and flicks a soot-dark wing-tip. It wafts the faint scent of smoke between them, a bitter censer. “I wonder if it could really kill you in there, or if it’s an illusion. Did you get a chance to use that?” With a gesture of her muzzle she indicates the weapon, clearly familiar in its place against the girl’s side. Where other, older horses might consider it strange that someone so young might carry something so sharp, Elif thinks nothing of the kind - she is, in fact, a little jealous and a lot curious.
But neither of those things is she quite ready to show, and the pegasus once more shifts her gaze to the commotion around them, marvelous strangers washed in thick evening light. This, too, is like something out of a story, and already she begins to forget the indignity of the maze (her anger, while bright-burning, tends to flicker and gutter like a candle, and is also quick-extinguished). Instead she wonders if the Night Queen is still about, and what other adventures (with more agreeable endings) the night might hold. Elif flicks an ear toward her companion, a little grin tucked in the corner of her mouth. “You planning on hanging around and seeing who wins, O?”
