Why did she not start at his short announcement of his presence? He thought that she would be embarrassed that he had caught her in frivolity, but he supposed that mares were allowed more leniency in that area. A single step not taken with purpose was punished, and those memories still served to drive him today. The yelling and beatings formed rather solid habits, so unless he was courting someone (which he had not done in years), his actions were not without an end goal.
Some might find this sad, how such a powerful and passionate being had been reduced into a machine.
When the mare approached, asking about his evening, the warrior frowned ever so slightly. "As well as I have ever slept, I suppose," he replied, not having much thought about sleep as anything but a necessary function. The fact that he was plagued by nightmares now made this function a little... well... dysfunctional, but could he really complain? He was a alive, for the most part, and floating through life.
The movement of the dragon caught his eyes, and the stallion visibly stiffened, his crimson eyes tracking the beast like a predator. He could still feel the strange way his skin stretched now along his left side since Gossamer's blue had burned off his crest and a fairly intense chunk of his face that went through his eyes. At least with his mane cropped like his brothers', he did not have to worry about it getting in the way.
"Did you sleep well?" he asked, returning conversation as he struggled to tear his gaze from the dragon. He finally did, but that was almost a moot effort since his eyes did not rest on Smoke's for very long.
She seemed to barely make any noise, like the mists themselves. When she paused in their group, he was unsettled that she had come so close without alerting his warrior's senses. Paladin dipped his head respectfully to her, having seen her once before at the herd meeting and recognizing that she was close to Mirage. If he had to guess, she was the Seer here.
Though he was not at all seeking a mate, still having unresolved tensions with Soleil, Paladin could not help but be inspired by her beauty. It amused him that he had a penchant for white mares, but she was the first of his own kind that had ever truly caught his attention. Still, he was polite and did not stare long, and he shifted his weight a little, feeling the winds catch in his thick, silvery beard. "Greetings to you as well," he replied. "Though I do not know your name..."
Where was that dragon? Paladin sound the creature with his ears, always trying to know where the predatory beast was... just in case. He trusted Smoke, but these scaly demons seemed to have minds of their own.
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