Anxiously, he waits the devil’s reply, his heart pressing against his ribs as if he had grown one a few sizes too large, though the gleam of that fear does not reveal itself in his pale blue gaze, which is cold and blank. They adjust slightly at the rude tone that the bitch presents in relation to her feathers, a fleeting flash of agitation at being talked to as if he was either daft or blind. He was obviously not the latter – he had seen her, hadn’t he? Whether or not he was entirely sane for doing so was a matter still up for discussion, but still – he wasn’t the sort to let such jabs ripple through him.

He wasn’t prideful enough, however, to put her back into her place. He wouldn’t do so with just about anyone, preferring to take a submissive position beneath others at this particular point in his life. He had no room to assume dominance, anyway; two years old, a vagabond from a land no one had heard of, with only the titles of his parents to give him any rights to much at all. He hadn’t even accomplished anything useful or exciting other than kicking that pegaus mare’s ass with Ricochet, but even that was nothing to be proud of.

It was a state he wasn’t really used to existing in. As a mere child, the pressing of the world around him had seemed a welcome adventure to take on, a softly spoken promise that there would be wonder and magic to be had. Now, he knew (or was pretty sure, anyway) that the only promises life truly held were those to bring confusion down upon it’s patrons.

This was another such moment. In one second, the beast was mocking his sensibilities and the next, within a blink of his inquisitive eyes, she is so near to him that he can smell the rot on her flesh. He jumps, a rough snort escaping his broadened nostrils as his neck arches and sends his head upwards in a quick bob, his front hooves leaving the earth an inch or two in a miniscule rear before his bulk settles back down to the soil. She is making him feel even more nervous, the racing of his heart now keeping time with the churning of his guts, and it is not the pleasant sort of awkward that Kahlua makes him feel.

No, this is the fear one feels when conversing with the lioness who picks her teeth with the bones of your brothers.

Still, he refuses to flee, refuses to give in to his paranoia (not unfounded, of course) that the unicorn heathen is going to eat him. Ranjiri’s feathers hang from her lips, twirling and bobbing under the pressure of a fetid tongue, her desires painted on the tundra air with that same horrid appendage. It was a simple enough request – but Dragomir still felt ill to his belly, worsened as the mare mocks the final pleas of the mare from which she had stolen these from.

And he is completely sure now that these are Jiji’s feathers. It wasn’t that he particularly cared for the girl, to be sure, but it brought to mind the way he felt anytime he saw the black mare broken on the wet ground, her large belly rounded and bulging up from the earth. Had she been only a “whiny pegasus” also?

No. She had been a spy, and she knew his name, and the weight of his sins. This mare had harmed poor Ranjiri for no reason other than a few trinkets for her mane.

Still. He was pressed between a rock and hard place here. The devil promised to not cause any shit with him so long as he assisted her in putting her stolen prizes into her mane, and not only that, he would receive one of the black ones. He had to admit, eyeing the sheen of its glossy obsidian pitch, that it was tempting, even if he was pretty sure he knew whose blood it was staining the end of the feather. He hadn’t ever seen another pegasus with golden feathers, anyway – and so he could only assume that it belonged to the light hearted mare who had stood up for her dense and brusque companion all those weeks ago along the border of the Edge.

Daughter of Gaucho, she had said.

Stuffing the memories back into their boxes, Dragomir clears his throat before giving the devil the answer she wants. "Deal," rumbles the deep growl of his voice, for he is hesitant to offer her aide but also hesitant to feel the venom of her bite. Cautiously, he bends his head to grasp at the golden feather lying on the cold earth, holding it in his teeth for a moment as he sizes up where he is to put it.

The stench of the bitch almost makes him change his mind, a sweet and sour taste gathering on the back of his tongue that makes it hard not to gag on the plush lacing of the feather in his teeth. As his mother had taught him, he ties the feather into the mare’s mane, the fetid stench of her flesh rubbing off against his nose and making his stomach churn incessantly. Once the first was in place, he bent his head again to gather the first of the black feathers, leaving the shortest of both for himself.

He stepped back from his work feeling slightly lightheaded and moderately overwhelmed by the horror he has just allowed himself to touch. He hadn’t realized it as he’d been working on the favor, but his flesh had begun to tremble, his steel guard fallen in the pressing wake of the mere presence of the wraith. Shuddering away the sickened trembling, he swallows hard as he reaches down and gathers up his prize for assisting the mare.

He wants to ask her if she’ll stay clear of his home for this favor, but he knows no such deal can be made and truly relied on. So, instead, he nods tersely, massive hooves shuffling uncomfortably beneath him. "Is this all you wold require?" he asks, only one of the thousand questions breaking against the walls of his mind.

Dragomir stands silently for the strange appraisal of the freaky stallion as he arrives, feeling the touch of his tongue along his flesh with a shudder that rattles even his core. It’s a gesture meant to cow the submissive, he knows this much from observing stallions while tending to their mares and children, and the simple fact that it is being used on him by this pompous monster made him want to immediately rip the slobbery appendage from his mouth.

But he was raised better than that, despite former moments in which he had lost his honorable and stone worthy demeanor; either way, there were now two of the demons to deal with rather than just one, and he didn’t need to glance about him to know that there was no one here to help him.

Or perhaps… there was.

He feels the tingling sensation of the magical branch rise from his rump to the tips of his body, shielding him from some unseen assailant that has escaped the lips of the stallion. The young painted stag, while often a failure in social situations, was good at observation, and while he was sure that the ailment the two suffered from was magical of sorts, it also now dawned on him that it passed between others much the same as a snuffling nose and upset stomach.

Without a word, he passes a prayer on to the Gods of this land, and the magical tree that had given him this seemingly mundane and useless gift.

And then he made possibly the wisest decision in his young life.

He needed to get this knowledge to the others, so that they might know the tree had given them a means to remain safe among the walking dead, even if those blessed were few. He had seen the magic at work, felt it hum across his flesh, and he knew it for precisely what it was.

Salvation.

"I think you should go fuck yourself," he says quite tersely around the fringes of his black feather before lunging hard and away from the two devils, charging as fast as he can towards the Edge until he’s under the cover of trees and sure he’s away from the sure to pursue him savages.