"Dead?" she asks with some measure of surprise to her face and tone; its not often the Lady is caught so off guard as to loose her mask, but it very much slips when presented with something so… obscene. The change is notable – mostly because she’d been smiling at the happy interaction between the prince Erebos (a friend of her son’s, despite his heinous sire) and the other colt present when the conversation had taken its dark turn.

The boy continues to explain that his dam seems to have met the same fate as well, and with a bit of a frown finding purchase on her face she glances from one sibling to the other. She hadn’t been particularly fond of their sire, to be sure, but he had been gifted with quite the mass and she couldn’t deny that his lineage was surely magical (for where else did one get bright red hair?), and any loss of her herd mates is one she takes poorly.

It is her decision whether or not they die, isn’t it? How dare he go off and make children she didn’t know of and then get himself killed! It was as bad as Mauja.

Had the Basin become known as a place to drop one’s bastards when they tired of caring for them?

The filly with the boy, Adelric as he was introduced, seems less amused with the whole situation than her brother – she has occasionally shot him venomous glances and has even leaned in to whisper to him, drawing a faint hint of a smile back over the shock and minor agitation that swells in the breast of the golden Lady. She has always preferred females, simply because the boys tended to get swept away in the beating of their heart while ladies kept their grasp firm on reality and the subject at hand.

The little one was proving her theories right before her very eyes, even as her mouth opens and her more thoughtful words bleat into the cold, cold air. The Lady grants her a smile in exchange, turning it slowly to the boy as he asks his question and fully prepared to answer all their inquiries in her usual flourish of words…

And then, Thranduil appears, a golden ghost arriving seconds after his words flit into her ears.

Again her smile is gone and her eyes are wide, partly because he talks so crassly of the end of a father whose children are present, but also because murder is quite the accusation – if it was the case, she would have numerous conversations on hoof, potential trials, the eventual death of whoever had cast one of her own into hell.

With his usual arrogant bravado, he sways forward into their gathering (quite numerous, she notes) with words still slipping from him, and with each noted word she grows more and more annoyed with her entire life and standing.

Idiots! Why was she cursed to spend her life dwelling in their inane, foolish madness?

Her eyes flicker from the spy to the children, a thousand questions rioting with her aggravation and setting fire to her usual aisles of escape – she rushes from thought to thought, wriggles imaginary door handles to find her way out of this predicament, to find the truth in the midst of so many falsehoods and wrong doings.

Krieger had assaulted one – perhaps two, as she looks over the twins – of the Falls, and her ears display her emotions quite evidently as they slip backwards into her dark hair. It was, in and of itself, an act that was not wrong; she had condoned violence upon the winged and the hornless for her ruling as had those before her.

But it had ended in his death.

Did she truly raise such fools? And what would come of these actions, now that they had come into play?

And all the while she can hear the voices of her past, see the mists crawling low on the earth over the bodies that she had loved when they were filled with life; she can hear the others talking of their death as if she could not hear, as if they were only flesh that had never lived or mattered beyond the shallow breaths they had stolen in life. She can hear herself crying, softly, alone.

She eases her eyes shut, graceful crown lowering as she ponders where to go from here; if she had fingers, they would be rubbing, digging, brutally trying to ease the ache that builds in the fore of her brain.

"They can hear you, you uncouth mongrel," she snaps quite suddenly, finding she is rather annoyed by the crass way of discussing the death of a man who probably meant something to two children who were unable to truly deal with such pain (for she knew it, it hurt her soul to see them stranded here upon her doorstep, the sadness haunting their faces where only youth and innocence should shine as it did upon the face of her beloved son, of dear Erebos), "he was their sire, not a sack of meat. Be civil!"

Her eyes have flashed open, her dark tail sways irritably behind her and her ears are still flat and add a cruelty to her expression that is not normally apparent.

"Adelric, Zunden," she turns her hard gaze to the children after a long stare at the golden one to ensure he’s got her point (it’s golden tip was angled directly at him before she redirected her line of sight, which may have helped clarify her intensions), "you are the blood of our blood, and for that alone, I would seek to aide you. But you must be honest with me, with us, for we are a family here – and family is truthful, always."

"Be assured we all carry our secrets, but those which would harm our brothers and sisters are best shared; take time to find your answers, for your heart is often more outspoken than your mind. Was your father murdered and deserving of vengeance, or did he die defending himself from his own stupidity?" she asks as if she wants to know the time of day, whether the rains fell in the south last month on a particular hour – she asks because she has to know, and children are easier to read than egotistical golden thieves.


[ OOC: Because Hawk, she just knows. Youtubeeee ]