Her offer is not taken at immediate glance the way she had wished it to be, but there is hope, still; the mare inquires further as to the golden mare’s logic, and as she has always been known, she is without reservation in providing her answers. There is her own logic to counter, which Illynx takes in with careful consideration and a blending with her own corrupted thoughts, aimed towards tearing down the emotional strength of those born blighted and warping them to her own uses. The stranger, beautiful but for her blemishes, will not be an easy one to corrupt – perhaps her mind cannot be swayed at all. In which case, further common ground will have to be discovered.

Again, she thinks of her daughter, the unfortunate golden babe spared from the grasps of death in the height of spring’s braying songs. Her son loves the girl in all the ways that Illynx despises and pities her, the only reason she has been allowed into their fold and the main reason the girl had not already been subjected to the removal of her extra bits as Illynx was suggesting to this woman.

For Aithniel, there was hope, raised among the civilized and couth beings of the snow; for this one, reared outside the lessons to be offered by those of the superior kind, it was obvious that hope was minimal. The beast even spoke of her wings as if they were anything more than a blinking sign that warned of her tainted heritage and the failings that would forever name her.

"Ease is provided to the winged only when there is room for such unsightly things," she says, "the sky path is open to you, yes – but the trees will snag your feathers where a unicorn could slip through silent as death, and tunnels too narrow for your broad frame lie open for my properly proportioned kin." She smiles, soft. "Not to mention the fragility of such things. Horns of glass break with less ease than the bones within the marks of your fool ancestors."

Turning away as if in casual nonchalance, she lets her eyes settle on the horizon peering over the stone embankments that surround them for a moment before returning her eyes to the stranger, a thoughtful light sparkling behind them. "But perhaps they are useful to you, and your mind cannot be changed. Perhaps I will offer you a home in the vale above us. Many within will never love you as you are now," her gaze drifts down the length of the black expanse of her wings, nostrils taking in their musty and dirty stench, "many will seek to bring you pain, and sorrow. Are you strong enough to withstand such long term agony in the stead of a brief one?"

A musing expression takes her smile, thoughts returning to the pale girl that she had asked nearly the same thing earlier in the season when they had found her crying and distraught over her condition. It was a decision that Illynx could force her into – at the risk of losing any hope of the girl belonging to her at the end of the day, a chance she was not willing to accept. And so it was her choice, one begrudgingly left to the girl.

To let such a creature into her fold was to invite the chance that Aithniel would chose to keep her hideous marks, or that Aithniel could sway the new hybrid with her knowledge of the truth, shared with her since she was very small, further implanted by the constant sight of those without wings and wearing horns.

What a dangerous risk - that perhaps could benefit her no matter the outcome.