I didn’t see her judgment of the ring, since I was still too tongue-tied and shy-eyed to look her in the face. But I heard her soft approval nonetheless, which gave me just enough confidence to twist my head around and try to man-up and meet her eye again. But she was already heading right for me—before I was aware of what was happening, she was stabbing me behind my ear with a slender thingy that eventually snatched itself somewhere within the tangle of my cropped mane.

“Hey—yikes—” I muttered, jerking away just a little bit from the seconds of discomfort—but the feather held tight. I knew it was a feather after glancing at her wing and seeing the gap in the gold of her primaries—and seeing that gave me even more courage to look her in the eye again, since all the awkward sort of melted off at that point. I dunno, it felt like an unequal trade; I had wrestled a mofo for the ring, true, but she was actually giving me a piece of herself, maybe to remind me to suck a little less every now and again. A breath of a chuckle escaped my lips, and I gave her an appreciative glance, brow kind of cocked in faint amazement. “Well, alright,” I whispered, and that was my thanks. She’d understand.

So it’s all tender n’ junk and the awk-ice had just been broken, right? Which seemed to be the right moment for some great giant jack-ass to emerge from the mists all ominous ‘n shit, his chest puffed up and cocky and all the great things about dudes. Except obviously it wasn’t great, for me. The placid look on my face, that small little smirk that Jiji had plastered there—all of it slid right off, onto the ground, deep, deep down through the crusts of the planet and all the way straight to hell. My eyes were electric as I stepped towards him, my mane almost bristling with it, stepping closer to Jiji as though my short ass was about to play shield-hero. Yeah. I was immediately pissed.

*"Ladies, is it customary in Helovia to exchange gifts on a stranger’s door--"*

“Is it customary to stomp around like a nosy bastard?” I asked, damn near shouting, angry at this jerk-wad for walking in on my moment with Jiji, for witnessing whatever vulnerabilities I had—in short, for seeing something he shouldn’t have. Which wasn’t his fault, really, but dammit you aren’t gonna come steppin’ up on me and my Ji like you’re some hot bro with an opinion. I’ll break your opinions, man.

But then his words caught up with me, the bit about being on a “stranger’s door…step”? Yeah, I think it was “step”. Anyway, the insinuation was that we were in a place that we shouldn’t been, someone else’s territory I’m guessing. Whatever. This place smelled of horses, sure, but everywhere smelled like horses; I didn’t remember crossing a scent divide around this place, and anyway, it was too damn hard to see in any direction anyway. I didn’t deflate; I kept my eyes on the dude, waiting on his explanation, a piece of me hoping Jiji could use her powers of “social etiquette” to maybe lighten the mood before shit broke loose. ‘Cause oh, hell.





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