It wasn't very loud out, the snowfall quiet and soft, and his own search very gentle and keeping quite a hush over the land. As such, the crunching of an approach was quite noticeable to him, and his ears perked up to hear it just as he exposed a potential mouthful. As he could hear the person coming, he still felt the familiar blanket of fear and the nervousness of social interaction begin to weave it's way into his mind, but he was better prepared for it.
The approach wasn't fast, wasn't sudden, it just sounded like someone walking, a little slowly even, like each step was measured and sure. It gave him a moment of time.
So he took the moment to snag the crumpled blades of grass from beneath the frost and pull them into his mouth, chewing as he turned his gaze upwards to meet whomever was headed his way.
"Hello?"
His first thought was to nervously take a step back, clearing his way from the path he had made as he seemed to retreat in on himself just the slightest.
The brilliant yellow of the mare's eyes were intense against the darkness of her face, and distantly reminded him of some great wildcat, looking out with hunter yellow orbs from the darkness of the shadows. The comparison did little to help his mood, the man chewing fitfully before thickly swallowing the morsel he had taken into himself, tongue slipping out to lightly dance over his lips, eyes flicking to and fro for a moment before returning to the mare who had approached him.
Other than the eyes and darkness of her visage that uncomfortably made him think of old stories of large cats more than half the size of a horse that skulked in the shadows, she had little to her. More darkness dancing around her hooves, and lightness to her body, speckles of darkness flicking over her legs like splattered shadows.
She had no great terrors to her form, and by all rights she should have looked harmless. The huskiness to her voice was peculiar, but nothing too much so. She could have simply not spoken for a time, and thus found her voice rather estranged from her.
But he still took another step back, quickly trying to change the nervous gesture into lightly toying with the snow with his hoof, like he was just fidgeting, not afraid. His wandering eyes and nervous ears betrayed him. He had already made the mental comparison to a hunter, and even if he hushed at his Anxiety that it wasn't anything to be concerned about, his brain still latched onto the thought and ran with it, causing a pervading sense of worry and fear throughout his form even when his mind could offer no solid validation for the feeling.
It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been though, and he could work with this level of unease. This was manageable.
He could try to at least maintain some composure this time around, unlike pretty much every single one of his other meetings.
"H-Hello..."
He was ready to leave it at that, but some part of his mind bucked at that idea, protesting that that would just leave the conversation hanging awkwardly in the air. If he was going to attempt a proper conversation he better do it right. It took him a moment to search his mind, before he managed to find something to say.
"What... brings you, here?"
The pauses in his statement were very unnatural and not at all easygoing, but hey, he tried. Points for effort. And besides, it was an improvement over his usual shtick of screaming.
@Crux
OOC: Congrats Auru, ya kept your cool for once.
