She could understand well enough why he was walking. It was odd that she was, in fact, airborne. A blur of pale white and chocolate in the sky, blonde and ivory mane twisting about in the chill winter air as she soars over the stretched claws of the forest. Against the pine and naked branches, the movement of white captures her immediate attention as she glides easily, light blue eyes scouring the ground, when she really should be keeping her eyes focused on the space of air in front of her. Normally, the conservative flier would be doing just that, but the movement, that had strayed her attention.

At first, the painted girl thinks her eyes must be fooling her, but never the less, she spins back in the air, gently gracing the skies above the snow laden ground once more. There it is, moving snow. At least, that is what Onni believes to be moving snow, until her eyes of pale blue fall better in sync with the details provided. No, not snow, but an equine; even more surprising yet, a pegasus. Harrying her descent then, to try and cut off the mystery being of pure white, Onni drops in altitude on steady wings, though the nervousness of flight catches at her heart and plucks its strings very abruptly. No time to make silly mistakes and get gored by a bare tree limb, that was certain. Throat a small opening to the sky, the paint mare finds herself entering the forest below.

When solid hooves touch solid ground, a sigh of relief is expelled in a cloud of warm vapor. Certainly, that could have been much more disastrous. There is little time to breathe, for the painted girl must intercept this pegasus, an angel of snow, before he gets lost in the grips of winter.

Soft thuds of hoofbeats echo on the trunks of trees as she canters, weaving between trees toward the area where she suspected the stallion would still be walking, moving slowly through the forest. Her sense of direction is especially keen on this day, much to her own surprise, because in little time she can see the flicker of white between tree trunks and limbs, like a ghost moving through the darker forest. Slowing her pace to a hurried walk, Onni manages to come up a few paces in front of the stallion, where she can finally view him face to face.

An angel of snow had been an excellent comparison. In contrast to her splotched form of white and brown, this stallion was only pristine ivory, mirroring the snow which floated softly to rest in drifts on the ground. There was a deep, dark, even malicious feeling prevaded by his eyes, which rested in stark contrast to the simple, elegant beauty of his feathered frame. They were alive, but menacing in a way that Onni could not pinpoint - perhaps the color, which was much more alive than her own pale eyes. A mask of ivory stares at the blank slate of a stallion, a smile placed in its natural home, tugging up familiarly to make her seem very unthreatening. The healer, after all, was anything but a threat to his safety.

"Hello," she says, her voice gentle and delicate like the ringing of a bell. "Are you in need of shelter?"
""

Lust. An emotion that Onni had never felt, even if the blush of it rested in the eyes of crimson that gazed at her now. How often had she overlooked the feelings of others, which were so painfully apparent to any of her age, of her stature? You could not truly call the painted girl innocent, for she had learned to fight, to survive. She had watched her home crumble under the forces of those more powerful than her, only to see its replacement fall into the clutched hands of the dead, ripped away from her heart and leaving her scattered.

The faces burnt into the backs of her eyes, never to be seen again, were enough of a reminder that Onni was anything but innocent.

Naive, perhaps, would describe the mare's tendency to overlook the obvious. Could she truly understand lust when she had no burning desires in her belly? Even the pronouncement of Moth's affections had fallen on deaf ears, when she had so easily related it to another mare. If it were anyone but her, Onni might feel the hints of love and lust and desire. All of those grown-up emotions fell void on the territory of her own stocky appearance, and that related her more to her passionate mother than anything. For the strong emotions they carried in their chests, feelings of loyalty and bravery, they were blissfully ignorant to the more delicate emotions of life. Seen as frivalous in the eyes of her mother, and not understood in the heart of herself, Onni had no hope of relating to the hunger burning in the eyes of the wolf before her.

Instead, piety and grace meet him, this faux angel staring her in the face with the hint of a devilish grin. Her own face of stark white, long pale lashes which enclose eyes of a calmer sky, wearing a genuine grin that felt natural to the mare who exuded kindness. If personalities could be entirely dichotomized, it could probably be seen in the pair facing each other now. One a wolf in sheep's clothing, and one the innocent sheep, entirely unaware of what may befall her.

"This is the Threshold of Helovia," the mare's sweet voice answers in response to his own question, spoken in a mysterious baritone that absolutely dripped with charm. The honey of charm, however, fell upon the inexperienced ears of a mare who would not have recognized it if someone pointed it out - a shame, really. On any other mare, it likely would have been Cupid's malevolent arrow to their unsuspecting heart. "A vast land of magic and surprises."
""