The smile that clings to the stranger’s lips floats over to the golden mare’s as well, the mention the vast whiteness of her homeland true enough in a way; it did seem abandoned and undesirable to those who had never seen the hidden haven nestled in the cold arms of the Steppe, and she remembers a humorous story of her youth of a land that was similar to her own having been named something terrible to keep guests away while the comparative of the frozen tundra had been titled a land of great value – which also kept guests away, because it was cold and a horrible place to live.

That the stranger repeats what Illynx already knows is lost in her temporary amusement at the memory, her words born from that same spark of thought. "Not all things are as they seem," she says, looking over the hybrid with a more broad smile having grown on her charcoal hued lips, "perhaps when one sees no one they should be more nervous than when they find many." Her head tilts, her face playful and ears alert as she giggles at her joke – places devoid of others were usually deadly or inhospitable, sometimes both.

In this ones case, the path is merely inhospitable – made more so by the eloquent Lady who attempts to keep her pretty mask of peace and pacifism in place just in case this is a rat sent to her by Kahlua. While she doubts the Queen is that smart, Illynx figures she has a few good minds around her, and they may doubt the tentative friendship she had been fostering with butterflies for thoughts and have sent a few little… birdies to investigate.

A look of thought crosses the strange hybrid woman before she answers the question that the Lady had tossed to her, Illynx patiently waiting with her floating smile and gracefully positioned body. As the explanation comes, many thoughts cascade through her like the winds of a summer storm, one after the other they buffet against one another.

Joining? Absolutely not. Her eyes stroke the length of her wings with disgust glimmering in their falsely kind depths.

Threshold and someone spewing ill of her people? Well, she’d have a few things to ask and say about that.

But she also mentions strength, and in the most flattering of ways.

Her brow arches gracefully over her smile that has lingered through all of her pondering, and another thought creases her; perhaps she can come in, if she is as brave as she hints at with all her talk of weakness and not wanting to be a part of it. Her fold is strong, heavy with soldiers and spies, and even the softer hearted of her kin have shown that they can withstand the oppression and darkness of war and plague. It has even grown, vastly so in the last year and few seasons as children were born and strangers lured from the Threshold.

"There are dark histories between my land and the others of this land, and some are slow to forget. Some are simply idiots who repeat whatever they hear and know next to nothing of the origins of what they say, and even more mistake our current goals to be precisely as they were to my predecessors, no matter how deeply I try to sway their hearts," she laughs lightly at the sake of the idiots she makes mention of, her golden eyes gleaming, "what have you heard of my kin? And from whom?"