She pardoned herself but Mesec’s smile only grew softer and he dismissed this pardoning - watching Hotaru softly even if she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t mind.” She could be presumptuous with him, he was finding that he didn’t mind, not in the slightest. He felt it too, the ease between them - the chance at reforming that bond they had when they were foals, which he wanted. He hoped there would not be another several years between their meeting, that he could get to know the kind filly that had taken him for a friend when he needed one. There was a lifetime between them now, truly, and he didn’t know her and she didn’t know him, but he looked forward to the chance to learn.

And he was happy when she didn’t move from his touch when he bridged the gap between them for a moment - that soft smile on his silver lips. No, there was no scent of deceit on her - but he thought he could smell the Foothills, underneath the Basin, underneath the scent of everything, he thought he could smell what had once been home. At least it was nice to imagine the smell was there, bringing up memories of that green land and all those they had lived with.

A chuckle then at the comparison of companions and foals, at the popping noise she made to empasize just how which it went. Lucius had grown up fast but Mesec had always wondered whether it had been because they were bonded. His own foal-hood had been short - the demigods grew up faster than they should, perhaps their companions were the same. “I’m afraid I haven’t been lucky enough to learn that about foals first-hand, but maybe some day.” Fatherhood was not something Mesec often thought of - it was a distant idea, one he hoped to reach happily. Thoughts of Ampere came with the idea, if a little muddied by the presence of Hotaru. His own thoughts, so wrapped up in them as they were, stopped him from asking after Hotaru - whether she knew the speed of a foal growing up first hand.

Although Hotaru’s comment on how she was used to being disliked certainly earned a curious look - she moved on from it smoothly enough and he was happy to keep with the lighter conversation for now. It wasn't often a smile came so easily to the demigod. And it was her next comment that he reacted to verbally. “Oh really? And what does Alice think of me?”