[AW] These Cold Steps Will Warm

[Adelheid]

Adelheid He seems surprised at first, his focus narrowing and intensifying on her for just a moment, sending an electric jolt of pride running through the mares core. She preens in the attention, well aware that her own description is at odds with the archetypal picture of the eccentric, elderly Scholar locked in his rat-packed tower full of decades worth of worldly knowledge. She is quite young for such a role, but she’s learned that age doesn’t necessarily translate to experience, though when confronted she’ll admit (with some venom) that they correlate, time being an essential element. She’ll be quick to assert that it’s the time you put into it that matters though, not just how long you’ve existed, a concept that many an elder peer has been painfully and infuriatingly oblivious to. Pleasantries exchange as expected from there, the stallion appearing both genuine and accommodating in his responses. She likes the way that he laughs quietly between ideas, the sound reassuring and encouraging to her approval-starved ears, and at last she relaxes, cocking her hips to rest one hind hoof on its toe, a well-known sign of trust in the equine language. Perhaps this too is a sign of her youth, being too quick to trust, too susceptible to first impressions, but she decides then and there that she likes the golden pegasus, pushing away the voice of caution in her mind. “Delumine, in Dawn Court, in Novus.” She repeats carefully, trying to simultaneously commit them to memory and recall if she’s ever heard those names before, drawing a blank on all counts. “I am somewhere new then. My home was called Trofelden - or part of it anyway.” She corrects, eyes dropping, turning back to the forest for a moment. ”It’s been segmented now.” She tenses at the oversimplification, awkwardly shifting in the silence after, her own discomfort making a benign pause in the conversation feel like a vacuum demanding explanation. Her body language is too telling, too vulnerable. She knows it, but the avoidance and embarrassment in her expression is more likely to be assumed from something nefarious than what it actually is, some trauma, some painful memory, not the childish fear of disapproval, of revealing something close kept and important only to be dismissed or ridiculed. Shallow, she thinks, to let the man believe she’s some damaged damsel when she isn’t, but she also thinks that he’ll leave the subject alone if she does, let her share with him what she wants to when she wants to, so she says nothing more, despite the heat of shame creeping into her dappled cheeks. ________________ ”speak” @Somnus Sorry for the delay! No Matter How Far

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