He smiles quite happily as he notes that Nasreen’s work improves now that she has seen the technique he has been using more closely; it had already been good enough to work into a rope, albeit a lumpy one, but the next twine she started on would be as good if not better than the first one that he had made once he’d figured out the best way to apply his hooves to the stuff to break it apart.

His grin only grows as the two ladies almost mimic each other, like sisters – a humorous note of the flow of the conversation that lightens his resentment towards the Queen slightly, eases the way his chest hurts when he looks at her. She will always be beautiful and perfect, he decides – it is only his own fault that it hurts so badly, after all. He’d known better when he met her, a foolish boy with foolish dreams and a young, naïve heart, and while the sting does not immediately reside, he resolves within himself that on this day, he will not let it bother him, or diminish his desire for her to love him in whatever small ways he could win such things.

Even if it was only friendship and a professional tie through their duties to their herd mates that he could hold close to himself, it was enough; no man spent his life weeping over the one that got away unless he was to become a very lonely, very miserable hermit somewhere far off from the nearest smiling face.

While he doesn’t seek out companionship actively, his time in Helovia has slowly crafted him from a solitary child raised in island seclusion to a mildly social creature, not that he felt any more comfortable in large gatherings or around those he did not know; but he finds that he derives great pleasure from being among those who are coming to be considered his friends, and that life would be rather droll and empty without their occasional interruptions to his winding thoughts and never ending inquiries on life.

He bends down to gesture with his nose and work as he explains after gathering his own separated twine and laying it on the ground between the two mares so both could look without stepping away from their current tasks. "Grab the end nearest to you and separate a chunk of the twine away like this," his teeth grasp the unbound tethers and fan out the ends, taking about a quarter of the material and tugging down, pressing the top end he wasn’t pulling free down with his hoof and moving it down as he loosened the strands, "some will fight you a bit, but just tug the fiber free until you have a separate collection of strings. Then do it again, until you have four strands instead of one."

And he did as he instructed them to do, moving slowly so they could watch and taking time to glance up every so often with inquiring eyes to see if they had questions.

@[Nasreen]