He has surprised her, which in turn surprises him.

His ears perk forwards in a sudden motion and his head shoots upwards, nostrils curving deeply in the swift inhalation of breath that accompanies the sudden motion of the little one and her bonded. The little fox scrabbles for purchase in the swift transition of her positioning, and what shock had coursed through the anxious stallion’s heart was quickly swallowed in the warm smile that rises that the mildly perturbation that crosses the kitsune’s face and the surprise that lingers on the childish (and sad) face of the girl.

Her answer comes pretty quickly, and it’s short and to the point. He meets the eyes of the fox who clambers up between her ears, his gaze seemingly more in control of the situation than his youthful friend, and while he knows not what the animal is called or the nature of his species, Dragomir does know that the companions kept by the four legged masters of the earth were often intelligent and full of wisdom that was lacking in the souls of those they kept company with. His mother’s dragon, for one, had been full of much deeper thought than his sweet dam, his warrior’s soul overriding her naivety, her innocent perspective of the world around her.

He at one point in his life had been entirely unable to discern what people were feeling based off of their body language – he’d had too little exposure to others in his early life and had suffered some in reading what small signs meant – but he could now take note of the low ride of her shoulders and the way her eyes were dull where the eyes of other children sparkled and glimmered in their youth, and so he cannot help but transpose himself somewhere in the mix of her day and to take her lie as what it is.

She’s not fine, but whatever. She can say she isn’t and deal with it on her own if that is the path she wants to take, and he can be here for now to bring a smile to her face for a while before she goes back to her sadness. She already lived in the Edge, obviously, so he couldn’t offer her consolation and potential friends in the border as he had Cirrus, but he did have at his disposal himself.

As little as that might count for.

"That’s good," he says, looking at her for a while with his soft and perhaps dopey smile lingering on his mouth before he lets his blue eyes run over the fox thing again, "say, what kind of animal is that? He isn’t a normal fox at all."



Dragomir</style>
where light shines, shadows will stretch</style>