The other mare is still listening to Illynx as if she’s putting on some sort of five star entertainment routine, and while the Lady enjoys the admiration and time spent on herself by the other woman she has to wonder what motives lie behind the watching eyes of the dark mare. Perhaps it is simply the beauty and history of her people that hold her in thrall, but the golden wench is not so easily distracted by flattery as she was in her younger days, and she must assume that everyone is out to get her lest they succeed.

Still, Agrona does not seem aggressive, or the sort to plot against a stranger; after all, it hadn’t been her to initiate the conversation, a fact the Lady remembers all while speaking her brief rhetoric on the history of the mountain herd.

Her laugh arrives brief and dancing at the jab made towards the intelligence of the herd that had chosen such a location, the woman in ways agreeing and in others seeing the purpose of why they had chosen where they had. For one, there was not a soul to come beating on their door to take it away from them; for another, it did the same thing for the group that living in the midst of the freeze had done for her own people – an aura of ferocity, of perseverance, hung over the leaning peaks of the Steppe and it oozed deeply into the pores of its beloved children. "At least not wise," she remarks, "or they’d still be there."

More stories regale from her lips, tales of their secret trail and the home hidden at the end, tales of the God who watched over them with his quiet wisdom. She shouldn’t be so surprised when the stranger asks her to take her home with her – it wasn’t the first time it had happened, in all honesty, and the Lady sweeps her golden eyes across her brow with an approving smile. She was at least whole, unlike Abishia had been, and would likely draw little interest from the others as the painted hornless had, but still… the allegiances of the woman were unknown. It wasn’t that Illynx feared that they couldn’t handle a few ripples in the still waters her rule had brought, more that she was unable to trust anyone or put faith into action unless she saw a prize to be earned at the end of the hard road it would lead her onto.

Her mangled ear falls back against dark hair, a ponderous light growing across her face for several long seconds before she smiles and chases out the clouds of doubt in her head. If there was a chance the dual horned one would come and stay with those worthy of her company, it was worth any risk involved; the golden one found that this conversation had been the first she’d truly enjoyed in too long, already seeing the vines of kinship that tied the pair together.

She was no Psyche, but she would do.

"Very well," she simpers, turning her metallic laced frame about towards the north and the familiar paths that would lead her home, a smile adorning her features as she glances over her shoulder, "but its our secret for now. Bless your heart if someone were to hear how to get there from your lips… we don’t take well to the uninvited."

@[Agrona]
OOC: Basin thread awayyyy ~ should be up here shortly!

There was a river once,
with many round stones
enchanted by shallow hopes
of embracing the ocean;
water is peculiar this way,
how its life is a line
that cannot bend or change
without the approval of its bed.