She found a great pleasure in the way the child latched on to her quick Helovian political tour, her ego crooning away happily in a small corner of her mind. There was much and more she could share with the girl, but the babe was young, and not likely to want much more than what she was given. Had she been older, Illynx would have gone on to explain the Basin itself in more depth – but her youth saved her from endless lessons. She would learn as she lived among them, and that, to the golden mare, was the best way to learn such things.

The babe’s sharp words at the mention of stealing foals draws a smile to the woman’s face; she rather likes the fire of this little white eyed creature, even if she is wrong. Lena mirrors the answer Illynx herself would have shared (though more than likely spiced with far more words and a handful of names that would fly right over the girl’s head), and she nods in agreement. "Children especially," she says softly, looking at the child sorrowfully, knowing that she cannot truly understand such things; it has taken Illynx a good bit of her life to recognize her bitterness and take care for those she lives with. Jorogumo’s mother is no longer around, for whatever reason, and Illynx will not dig knives deeper into her heart by inquiring just what happened to the family that had borne the moon eyed filly.

The commentary centered around dragons and spiders draws another amused smile to the lips of the Lady, accompanied with an arch of her brow that reveals her curiosity in the statement. Perhaps it is true; she herself has seen how poison can work more quickly than blades or hooves. But Lena’s response is also valid; if not for the healer, Illynx would wear a back of hideous wounds caused by such ignorance of the potential strength of an opponent.

"Lena is correct; what if it is a hydra? Removing its head will birth three new, and just as vicious," her smile is not mocking, more one of wisdom that she tries to impart with the ebony foal, "not every dragon is the same. This World’s Edge, the dragon in question, has numerous heads to begin with. It then becomes more tactful to assault the legs without letting the eyes see your arrival."

When asked for reasoning behind her racist logic, her smile gleams and is wolfish despite the hesitancy of the bay mare alongside her. Illynx knows Lena is not as she is – but the healer has redeemed herself through her undying devotion to the Basin, her ability to never falter when faced with whatever challenge has overcome their kin. She glances to her briefly before returning her focus to the child, beginning work on the most important lesson of all.

"Surely, we are much the same, but it is how we have come to be different that gives us our rights to power," she pauses, gathering her words before she speaks them, "our very horns are crowns, to start with. Equines are but unicorns who have lost their rights to rule, ‘disgraced’ as you worded it in the Threshold; the pegasus is a winged devil, equines disdained by the first Gods for breeding with birds and marked with their sin. No horse was ever born to fly." She looks to the girl hard for a moment before delving into her explanation of the wrongness of the winged creatures, words that were spoken from her father’s lips well before she had ever forgotten his name, "In addition to their original sin, all other beasts of flight are subservient to the unicorns and their mutated kin; eagles, sparrows, proud griffons. By such logic, those who touch the clouds are lesser than our crownless cousins, the equine, for they were built only to serve those bound to the ground."

She looks to Imogen, nestled between Lena’s legs, and up to the healer herself, before continuing in the rhetoric of her childhood and life since, and she wonders if Lena has ever viewed the darkened side of the Basin so closely, "Magic runs deep in our kind, a quick glance about you to the variety that the name unicorn can boast proves it." The simple appearance of Lena, the golden attributes of her own body; the cloven hooves and leonine tails of Leovan and Ulrik. She had never seen such variety among the other breeds; surely this meant that they, the unicorns, had the oldest bloodline of them all. "The genetic variety that can be found among our kind and our kind alone, to me, proves that we have lived on this plane for longer than the others. It gives truth to the assumption that equines once wore horns, and that the pegasus were born from the equine. We came first."

Smiling beautifully at the child, there is wickedness hidden behind the golden glimmer of her stare. "Do you see why it is so, that we must rule?"