As Ashamin turns, the glint of gold upon his slender haunches draws my eyes; strange.

The smoke smell grows strong as he moves and lets the wind touch new places of him, making the air smell ironically warm and comfortable despite the shivering that besieges my damp, sweat lined skin and his own, nearer to the blizzard which wails its sorrowful and heavy song outside.

These are the backdrops to my thoughts which touch upon the shining metal, the strangest natural born marking I have ever seen, and so I deduce that it is not natural, that its reminiscence to the jagged white scars I have seen on the pelts of aged, seasoned warriors is not to be mistaken for a pretty trinket given to him at birth by the artistic fingers of creation, as the gilded detail upon my own frame.

Those are wounds born of a horned thing, a being with two blades which rest alongside the ears (or incredibly accurate in their aim with a single blade, to create such parallel markings), much like my darling Aithniel, or my uncle; I have even seen a dragon or two with horns such as these. The scar itself is much larger than those that I can compare it to, and I wonder for a while just how close to dying the little man came when he encountered whatever ramming force had nearly hewn his right hip off.

His tail, long and banded in the strange metal object that had “sparked” this whole debacle into life, drops to the stone floor, again emitting a few dazzling arcs of lightning. I look at the object as if it’s a venomous snake, like I look at most things I don’t understand and which pose some obvious air of threat, but the look is fleeting, my stubborn refusal to seem weak in front of anyone drawing my eyes away from the frightfully foreign coil and to his face, his blackened gaze.

“It’s alright,” he says, claiming to have had a long day as well.

I grunt in response, not really sure what else to say about it, but it doesn’t really seem he was looking for one, anyway. For a good while, we stand in the uncomfortable, crackling silence that is born after an agreement to discontinue a disagreement, and I can’t help but feel like I’m being judged.

No gavel sounds, but Ashamin’s voice, his words luring my eyes back down to the strange, dark deer creature, the softened glow of compassion brightening my weary and aggravated gaze for the fleetest of moments.

"Fine," I say, back peddling some steps so that I am nearest the rear of the cave, leaving ample room for the smaller, painted stallion and his young friend to enter the space, having no need to be nearer to me than they were now. It’s still pretty damn cold inside, but at least the wind doesn’t reach in here as bad.

"He should move if he is chilled," I say as an afterthought and in some attempt at the typical niceties which pass between herd mates, an ear flicking back and one of my legs slipping into a posture of comfort, rather than hostility, "blood warms where it rushes."