Among the bare branches of the trees sat someone who listened, keen eyes and ears letting no thing go unnoticed; her head turned, shifted ever so slightly, to better catch what was said, and better see who said it. The owl seldom blinked, her gaze pale as the northern ice itself, merely sat there, feeding someone else little tidbits of information – and some part of that other soul felt a sense of disappointment at having been bested in reaching this one. He'd haunted the forest for a few days, ignoring his instincts and following every trail of pegasus feather in trying to build a shaking confidence to someone he would, perhaps, svíkja. Briefly he thought of Roland, wished he had the golden stallion's experience, but what was the point in wishing for someone who was miles away?

Irma said, you do not know him, and Mauja moved again, his long legs carrying him towards the pair again before even all words were out of Hector's mouth. His blue eyes were the same shade of the owl, but where hers were dispassionate and cold, his were warm, twinkling with some mischief – as if the world amused him, but he could not tell why, only that it did. And in truth, it was not him so much as the persona he had adopted, the name and the story that went it, charming and brash and cautious all at once, someone whose past had gone wrong and whose future would be worse.

When the leafless trees cleared, and he saw the pair, his eyes were not at all drawn to the newcomer, but rather to Hector. Where the newcomer was short and rather plain, the chestnut stallion was taller than anyone Mauja had met in a good while, slender but packed with muscle, two horns upon his face and two wings upon his back. Dirty blood he thought by reflex, but not a ripple passed over his face as he hoofed his way over to them, his intense eyes fixed upon the taller. Mauja was by no means short himself, rather he was used to towering above most others he met, and he had a feeling Dreven was much the same way.

And so, he introduced himself with a wry grin, his tail stirring against his hocks as he settled at a respectable distance from them, and said: "You, sir, are very tall." His grin grew a fraction wider, a curling of his black lips, and he hoped the chestnut stranger would not know him – would not know his name and his face, and be able to call his bluff. So when his little playful, teased greeting of his (how the thought was weird to him) herd-mate was over with, he dipped his head at the newcomer. "Dreven, of the same herd."