Crowning antlers rise and dip in Nymeria's peripheral vision as Lilómiel circles near. It catches her attention fleetingly, causing the grullo to take a second glance towards the strange and delicate deer. She had not seen a like creature before, and certainly not one that hugged a horse's hip. Even with the queer and intangible sense of darkness seeming to follow the cerndyr, Nymeria decided that his presence was relatively unimportant; she would presume that he was bonded to the unicorn. Satisfied with her conclusion, she cast her attention back towards Thranduil.

His deep-chested laugh boomed with astounding audacity; he seemed pleased by her retort, and Nymeria looked at him with renewed interest. While her interactions in the past had a tendency to be limited, most disliked her slant towards deadpan sarcasm and wire-laced returns. Ophelia had practically frothed with rage when Nymeria first opened her mouth—snotty, the Amaranthine had said, along a repetitive strain of you-have-attitude. It had not done much to endear the grullo to her aunt, especially considering the fact she was supposed to be, well, legendary. To see Ophelia, to hear her voice, to recognize that she was as fallible as the rest of all the fucking basics... Nymeria resented it. She was supposed to be an immortal, and she was but an inflated ego with a superiority complex to boot. Still, Nymeria couldn't deny Ophelia was a strong fuckhead, and she would need to be careful if she wanted vengeance.

"I would hope so," Nymeria said with deceiving lightness; she twitched the corners of her lips up into a gentle smile, conveying an irrepressible sense of spirit. It wasn't even all false. Like she had felt first seeing him striding out along the horizon line, there was a very real and prominent sense of majesty to him, the kind that lured her like a worm-wrapped fishhook. (She was the corresponding fish of course. Nymeria had no personal interest in eating worm-wrapped fishhooks.)

I don't tend to make many of those. The grullo turned up the wattage of her smile in response to his wide grin, and took a step closer to him. Somewhere between consciousness and habit, her stride had increased in languorous length while her hips low-key swung from side-to-side. Around Thranduil, she felt irresistibly comfortable, as if drawn by the promise of kindred spirits. Sometimes, Nymeria thought, that was the way things simply were: you know you have something going for more than just you. When he smiled, full of almost malignant promise, all it did was incite the smouldering embers of curiosity and admiration and genuine like. It was not much of a stretch when he proclaimed their friendship; the innate desire was already close to her tongue and prevalent in her mind. "Friends," Nymeria echoed almost dreamily, and the lie sank in, imbedding in both heart and head. "A real friend would tell me their name," she continued, with a smirk and a laugh and a wink.

However, something had softened about her. Her immaculate guard had lowered, and now that it could be seen down, exposing the bone and sinew of Nymeria's spirit, it suddenly became clear she had been hiding herself before.