yael

She chuckles uneasily, mostly because it feels so wrong to find his obvious antics amusing. It is not the laughter itself that seems improper (has she not laughed with other women? It brought no sense of shame), but the company. Because as much as she knows she shouldn’t want it, she does. Gaal’s attention is flattering. It signals a change from the bedraggled and wrecked, perpetually cold slip of a thing she was when Lyanna found her. Perhaps there was more meat on her bones, a greater sheen to her coat? A tad more confidence in where she was going? It never once crosses her mind that she might simply be easy prey for a smooth-talking stallion - hopefully her spidey senses are better than that.

“Ahhh, yes. I can see t’at.” She responds, letting her gaze roam over his display, before averting her eyes. But that isn’t quite right either, so she tries to settle them on his face. Trying, ever trying, to ignore the heat of his gaze, and painfully conscious of his scrutiny.

Goddamn if he wasn’t just her type, too. There was some sort of cliche in the way the tiny woman gravitated towards the winged, draft-types; the natural strength and protection their bodies promised her, the way she fit neatly under a wing (sometimes with room to spare), the pure solidness of their muscles that seemed to be able to withstand hurricanes and hellfire. As if they (nevermind it was all imagined) would be the heroes she wanted as a filly, stuck in a world that hinged entirely on what type of stallion wanted her as a mate.

Eventually, Yael learned to be her own heroine - and even took to saving others - but a girl’s fantasies never truly die, do they? Not when a certain tingling sensation lingers long after the cock crows to summon the sun.

She is about to ask about his accent and name, but he strikes first - and it is a question she is not prepared to answer. Not only has she avoided almost all discussion of her Van, but to talk of him to another stallion? Hell no. That’s just asking for waterworks. What could she say? ‘What I meant was you remind me of my mate, whom I loved so much that I went into death to retrieve, and then accidentally killed years later. You should have seen the look on his face when he was unraveling.’ Yeah… no. Even after a few drinks, that sort of thing doesn’t go over well. So she tries something simpler: “Never. But eet ees too compleecated for mere ackaintences to talk about.” There. That should shut it down.

But she doesn’t want to shut him down, so without missing a beat, she continues, “Do I detect an accent, Gaal? Vhere are you from?” Deflection: she’s gotten good at it.