The coolness with which he defers my arrogant fury is deflating.

It makes me feel stupid, which keeps the ember of my anger alive, but only just; the harshness that has lined my figure until now eases slightly, my golden eyes softening as I come to regret the suddenness of my tongue. I don’t apologize. It’s not really in my nature to care if I’ve wounded the feelings of a stranger, even if he is a herd mate.

Instead, I stand quietly and let him talk, my tail still curling about behind me much like a cats when annoyed as he instead pauses to touch the between the knobby antlers of his young companion. I’d spent enough time around other creatures to know he doesn’t like me very much - I’m not really sure if I should care.

He tells me he’s the Haruspex, which makes my eyebrows rise – not only because I didn’t really expect him to have been someone of as much importance as that, but because he ironically resembles, in ways, the last man I knew to hold that position. I can’t help but wonder what the Time God thinks of his luck, having not only had one funny looking, small stallion as his seer, but two.

Perhaps, I think to myself, there is some correlation with being maimed and having a deeper insight in the realm of the spirit, and the intangible.

I think I would rather be as I am, if that is the case.

These thoughts distract me from the rest of his statement, which I find myself having to piece back together in retrospect in the seconds following the pause of his words. The ember of my anger flashes brightly, but does not catch.

"Perhaps because the last meeting which I attended was overseen by my mother," I say with narrowed eyes, looking upon the bihued stallion with some measure of daring, my ears still held in a position of hostility but my tone more defiant than angry, as they had been before, "another wore your title then."

I challenge him to deny the truth of my words with an unbroken stare. I can throw fancy titles around too, see?

He says he is sorry if he startled me. I don’t know if I believe him, and surely I am not going to admit as much to the uselessly horned man before me. Looking away from him after a rather visible twinge of my face, I find myself lying, a low rumble of words breaking from my lips.

"You didn’t," is my remark, looking back at him for the first time with my ears raised, rather than reversed in memory of the sudden outrage that had filled me upon being startled and mocked. I don’t want him leaping in afterwards with an accusation that I’ve been untruthful, and quickly jump in with further conversation, trying to lighten the tension in the air which almost crackles around us.

"You don’t look like much of a fighter," I say, running my eyes over his slender build and his short stature, his dangling blade almost the least of his physical concerns when it comes to combat; maybe its rude, but its true, and I have never been one to curb my words for the sake of another’s feelings.