She's... smiling.
"You are quite cute. If a little smelly."
What is there to smile about? Although, he supposed it must have truly been humourous to watch him flailing about like a newborn foal. No doubt it only added to the reason he must stay on his guar-
Wait.
Hold on.
Back up, rewind, take two.
What?
Cute?
He didn't even fully process the fact that she had stepped back when she's speaking again, his brain still utterly ground to a halt because woah, hang on a second there.
"Gosh, it seems we're both quite smelly."
...And it seemed the topic of his confusion passed. Taken aback, he decided to just forget that that statement was ever made, lest it drive him to madness trying to pick through what it meant.
To more present, active worries, she was surprised, or so it seemed, to hear him speak. Was she not the one talking to him prior to this? Had she expected him to keep his silence? Oh Vespera, had he just royally fucked up by opening his goddamn mouth again? Oh, this was what he deserved, wasn't it? This was what he deserved for questioning, this was what he deserved for not listening the first time around.
He should have listened the first time she spoke. Shouldn't have asked her to repeat herself, should have just kept his stupid mouth shut once and for all-
"Which part did you not hear?"
Which part did he not-?
"I have said quite a lot. It's a consequence of not saying anything to me."
Consequence? Oh he knew he had royally fucked up-
"I hear silence and I have to fill it."
Wait he was in the middle of thinking-
"It's an unconscious compulsion."
Can you just pause for two seconds-
"I had been offering you fruit..."
He was trying to-
"Little bit of sugar?"
Wai-
"Makes you feel better?"
Can you jus-
"Or did you miss everything I said?"
Please-
"In which case, let's just start from the beginning."
Oh my Vespe-
"I am Florentine."
His mind didn't even bother, simply stuttered where it was at and processed no more. He waited, simply standing where he was, weight tilting slightly to lean more onto his good hoof as the mare in front of him looked at him expectantly. Slowly, but surely, his brain kicked back into gear as he raised a brow, unknowingly biting his lips as he did so and portraying a strange mixture of nerves and some subtle sarcasm in the cock of the brow.
Only one thoughts managed to process.
Done yet?
It seemed she was more or less done speaking.
Yes?
Wait a beat.
One more.
She's still not talking.
Okay, it should be over.
Yeah she's done.
Well, to be quite honest, no he didn't catch most of her repeat of what she said. It all happened so fast it just flew straight over his head. He had been too wound up to begin with due to her sudden appearance to really be capable of fully processing her words, mind too distracted by his own whirling thoughts. And then she had never given him even a moment to try and allow his brain to pull itself back together, and everything just managed to short circuit.
One could practically see the smoke coming out of his ears as his eyes were blown wide, less from fright now and more just sheer... shock? Disbelief? Confusion? There wasn't quite a word that could encapsulate the feeling of one's mind simply ceasing to function in face of such overwhelming information to process.
In some sheer form of desperation, the man managed to latch onto one, tiny little thing that she had spoken. One small piece of the conversation (monologue, really) that had registered. A phrase so familiar that he had heard it more times than there were stars in the night sky, albeit with the ending word being different nigh every time, but the phrase itself, and the phrase's meaning, so familiar and well known that even his smoking brain could keep up with that at least.
I am Florentine.
She wanted to know his name.
"Auru. Auru Geniven."
@
OOC: Well he's not anxious anymore, for now. Just broken. xD
