I’d been a kid once, too – and I, as I recall, was hell on a Gods hoof. Would she be so cursed?

I’m about to make some sarcastic remark about how I’d the rest of my life to wipe snot from the nose of hideous little brats, but I was surely delighted that she had thought to consider my feelings in the matter. Honestly, I was still too preoccupied with how my parents had failed or succeeded, and my own trajectory in life, to be worried about making little unicorns. But, what she says next, in unison with her raised head and lowered ears, leaves too tender a spot to prod at for me to resist.

"I see, a valiant and honorable sort," I ask through a fox’s mischievous grin, "the sort we openly speak of in front of others because we are just so very proud and not one bit ashamed."

Whatever game she wanted to play, I would win; though I was not keen to the knowledge of her sire, believing her to be some warrior’s cast away daughter rather than a child of Mauja’s, I did know enough of her dam from my time with my mother to assume she was not the sort to hold her tongue. However, I doubted she had been taught to wave her oral appendages with as much nuance or swiftness as I – so I was equally eager as I was doubtful to test these theories.

Her first proverbial swing of the blade arrives with the name of a whore and the whore’s mentor. While I let my smile be replaced by an expression of nothingness (that might, I suppose, be taken for crest-fallen), my ears falling aside as if flatted along the top by some invisible object, I can’t help but wonder if she realizes that her jab had been almost entirely off the mark (though mother’s name, and mine, so closely paired…why can’t anyone call me Ulrik’s son? The Engineer’s boy? Father never hurt me like she did, he never would have even thought…).

Shoving away what little burns in her burn with the ease of swatting away settled ash, I assume the mask (or so I think) that reads how very terrified I am by all these words – a flash lighting within my golden eyes and my smile still traced upon my features, hooves steadily planted in the soil, but for the forth, which rests and waits. That she uses her mother as a defense still only leaves me that much more assured that I can taunt her for being pregnant, and she will probably break into tears, and run home to her mommy.

"Sialia is an old woman," I answer with a snort, "I’m more afraid of how your stupidity will affect your unborn child than I am of her, or the threats you make in her stead."

My tail plays behind me, golden eyes narrowing as my head manages (somehow) to rise an inch further than it already was, the smile that finds its way to my lips almost riotous at my next set of words before they even meet the air.

"Anyway, I hope it goes well. I heard that some women, you know, suffer some serious consequences on the not talking end. Would be a shame to ruin it this early on, y’know?"

@Glacia