The lack of conviction in the man's voice pricks his interest. Eik looks at the other stallion with a small, curious smile. "Do you?" He cherishes words freely spoken and would encourage the other man to speak without conscience, were it in his nature to say so in so many words.
He nods his head gently as the man speaks his tale. His story is similar in some ways to Eik's own. There is nothing glamorous to them, nothing magical or particularly powerful. Is it merely chance that brings them together on this rock, or something more? One of them dances and the other moves barely at all.
The question is turned and Eik finds that his heart, the defiant thing, is beating ever slightly faster. "When I lost my family, this is where my legs brought me." It is the short of things, the long of it is saved for nightmares of smoke and ash. He doesn't speak much of his past, for there isn't much to say. Life endures, however cruelly, or it does not.
So they try to put history to bed. Not that he doesn't still ache for it. But pain doesn't bring anything but more pain.
He wonders if the other man has found what he seeks here, but does not want the question echoed back at him. Only because his answer is too complicated, and how could anyone understand? It is like a child chasing the waves at the ocean- though he does so without delight.
(A poor simile then, but we've never been good at cut and dry. We're full and full of words and words, though we try to speak so little. Only let the essential ones escape us.)
So he does not ask another question, not yet. "I'm Eik." Not a stranger, not a ghost.
