let's be wildflowers
He had not intended to scare her - and for a moment while she spun around and danced like some delicate forest native, he wondered if he had stumbled upon a deer rather than a horse.
She spins around with a speed born from instinct and practice, and Ipomoea falls as still as the trees when he finds himself on the other end of her arrow. It quivers slightly, sunlight glinting off the point of the sharpened stone edge. He traces that line with his eyes, and is surprised even at his own stoicism. His heart beats evenly, slowly, and when he lifts his eyes from the arrowhead to the mare, he smiles at her in a way that says ”it’s alright. This isn’t the first time for me.”
"That’s alright," he says smoothly, and when she finally lowers the bow and puts the arrow away, he dares to cross the distance that still separates them. "It’s not the first time I’ve had a bow drawn on me. I should have announced myself." He doesn’t say she should have been listening for his footsteps - how many times had he wandered Viride, lost in thought, deaf to the world? It’s been a while since he had last been here, and yet, he knows it easily could have been she surprising him, another day, another time.
"Foals," he corrects her, ears turned forward in interest. "Although if you want to get specific, fillies are female foals, and colts are male foals." And he wonders where she came from, and whether his initial impression of her being a deer had been correct after all.
"I’m Ipomoea," he gives his own name in turn, and watches to see if she recognizes it. He hopes she doesn’t; he’s been gone so long, Po doesn’t want to know what sort of reputation that has left him with here. "It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cally."
He’s far too aware of the bow at her side and the dagger on his own foreleg when he comes up beside her. Only a few months ago he would not have given them any thought - but he’s learned to wield a weapon since then, and he’s seen others draw blood with their’s. Now, while they do not make him nervous, he is all too aware of what people are capable of when they have the means.
"You must be new here," he asks her, although it comes out more as a statement than a question.
