He stands there in the door, taking in all my youthful pride and biting words with the frosty wind to his back, tousling his bihued hair about his slender body. I feel the sweat that has built upon my flesh grow chilly as my heart ebbs in its pace, I can feel each touch of the breeze as it slips past him in this unwarranted waste of time; he smells like smoke, I just now notice.

At first, he answers me with a glare, which is soon followed by words, words which I take in and reply to with a soft smirk, mostly because it is how anyone answers such a childish, hopeful notion.

An idealist, I think to myself, nearly laughing at him in mockery for the foolishness of his statement. What a wonderfully safe world it would be if the desire to be a warrior made one truly powerful. I let my eyes slip across his slender body again, knowing from my slender experience in the field of combat how easily those bones would break without a coating of muscle to protect them, how small he is in comparison the brawny strength of men truly built to bring others to their knees, and I let the touch of my eyes answer his sarcasm with a coldness that reads how little I care for his theological nonsense.

I have grown among the strong, consider myself to have grown into one of the strong. I know my own when I see them.

His companion paces. I glance at him, not noticing that he is uncomfortable, only looking long enough to find no threat in his movement, and swiftly return my eyes to the larger of the strangers.

My smirk grows cold, my youthful face frowning and my golden eyes meeting him without flinching. Furen had been advanced in his talents and a great teacher, and he was not soft on me. There were times I was sure I wouldn’t be able to walk in the morning, so deep were the bruises he’d left on my body (and yet, somehow, each day I rose, I rose to take his challenge, and eventually, I became eager to meet him on the field, and to deliver the bruises that once I had only earned). While I wear no scars, the laws of the Nightwalk having forbid my tutor from breaking my skin, I have paid my dues.

That this Ashamin suggests a warrior can be made with “honor” makes the ember in my chest flare, so much so that I miss a similar rising in the Haruspex's black eyes. My gaze feels molten as I feel my hooves move beneath me, taking a step closer, then another.

Leave it to a philosopher to speak of things he knows nothing of.

"Now, isn’t that an idea," I answer with as much sass as I’ve given most of this conversation, my eyes rolling sarcastically as my words close, "to claim victory with resolve, that no man ever dies while being honorable! I might have saved so many hours of training if only I’d known.”

I’m being impetuous, and I know it. My mother would have already knocked my lights out. That this man hasn’t only further proves he is no warrior. He stands in the cold touch of the wind and uses words to uphold the respect he should demand with his sinew.

My skin is trembling. I realize that I can’t tell whether its from the cold, or from the tension that I have allowed to wrap tightly around my brain, strangling out most of my finer thoughts.

His companion shifts again.

I was going to open my mouth to continue my rebuttal (something about how, if he was a fighter, then I was a pretty lady with flowing pink locks) when I notice the movement. I’m no good at this guessing thing like mother was, and puzzle for the briefest of seconds over his strange motions. Is it fear that moves him, or the cold? Perhaps it is a will to defend…

The thought inspires shame; I was taught - I have striven - to be bigger than this.

My eyes shift away from the bonded pair and move towards the floor, which is covered in a fine veneer of eddying snow that dances in the wind, a transparent ribbon of ethereal ice. It’s so strikingly beautiful, so stunningly different from the tumult of emotions that rages through me in its graceful serenity. It is a shame to soil such beauty with anger, to threaten it with the sticky warmth of blood.

I am just so… so very tired, at least my heart; my body is very much awake, fueled by the endless ribbon of my thoughts. I shouldn’t be so ruthless towards him; he didn’t chase mother away, get me lost, lose my friends, cause the blizzard, or ask to be a part of the change that had startled me so much; he didn’t even really do anything to me at all, at least not on purpose.

I meet his face again, breath a long, heavy sigh, trying to let most of my hot anger escape with it.

"Look," I say slowly, trying to force my voice to remain even (though I still find I would rather shout at him), "it’s been a long day for me, okay?"

The closest thing to an apology he’s going to get.


[ OOC: omg it has taken forever to get this thing out. :| *kicks rikyn out the window* ]