Mateo does not feel as creepy as he probably should, watching the stranger and the thoughts that waltz across her face. When she stares back and snorts he simply lowers his head a little, as if it really took effort for a man of his stature to look less imposing. Eventually she smiles, and uncertainty releases the clenched fist in his stomach.
"I have what?" He tilts his head uncertainly. (is she hard of hearing?) "You have sum-mer eyes." He says it a little louder this time, and a little slower too, just in case she had a bird's brain to accompany those wings. The sentence doesn't sound as poetic the second time around, and he ruffles his feathers in disappointment.
She's moving closer now and her eyes once again are less summer and more cutting as they look him up and down and inside as though she were studying. As though there were answers in him and not just questions, questions, questions. She seems to have made up her mind about something but he isn't sure what it is. He hopes it's something good, he hopes it so fiercely his eyes hurts a little.
"Maybe... maybe I feel a little closer to knowing something... like maybe god, you know?" He looks to her, realizes she probably doesn't know (how could anyone know the song on my tongue if I don't sing it) and quickly continues to speak. "But probably not. I don't know." No use hiding the disappointment in his voice-- he had wanted to experience something holy here, but there are some things for which all the wanting in the world will not change a thing. He wants to change the subject. "I know I don't like this heat." He laughs a little, as though if he could get her to laugh she would forget the childish things he just said.
Then he almost says do you think our pee will glow but he can't tell yet if she would find that crass or not. (change the subject, change the subject, why am I so nervous?) For a long moment he is at a loss for words. The mare is looking at herself for any physical change and all he can think is that she is about as handsome as he is pretty. It makes him strangely jealous, and the jealousy confuses him, and the heat of the ground is starting to make him sweat.
"What's, uh, that thing on your neck?"
The black doesn't leave Delumine much, and none of the dawn court ladies and gentlemen wore cloth around their neck as this mare does. The closest thing would be the thin, loose silver and gold neck chains that have come and gone in fashion. "A mockery of Solterran slavery," he heard someone indignantly spit in the tavern one night, shortly before tables were upended. He's never seen a Solterran slave collar before, although he's read all about them. In the sketches and descriptions they were never made of cloth, so he suspects this is no collar. Anyway, last he heard there are no slaves in Solterra any more. At least not officially.
"Is it comfortable?" He squints at it, then takes a polite step forward to take a closer look. It's... beautiful, really, but not in the way he's used to and there's something unsettling about that. He doesn't understand the meaning of it (is it a symbol? or a form of jewelry?) and that too is unsettling. Or maybe it's just the smell of elsewhere (Solterra?) on her, reminding him that there are so, so many places and things he does not know.
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@Elif <3
