Nymeria’s own thoughts ran parallel to Isopia’s, although on a slightly different path. Like the demigoddess, she observed and analyzed and dissected—watched and waited and planned, for every possibility and for every misstep. The convoluted pattern of thinking, a quick skip from here-to-there, diverged and converged, moving steadily towards a disturbing and unsettling conclusion: the other mare was alien.

The hybrid's veiled face was both unknowable and archaic, a relic of another time reincarnated into dusted flesh and smouldering eyes. Nymeria was inherently wary of Isopia, more from intuition than any evidence; and yet she was direly drawn to her, haunted with the need to know. There were secrets burrowed away in that magnificent skull, she was certain of it; how could such an impossibly divine creature not have secrets? And whatever the hybrid had, Nymeria wished to divulge—maybe by peeling back that tattooed skin and examining the blood pulsing through those veins.

Nym had an inkling it was blue.

The grullo didn’t mention her uncertainties or her wariness (who would?) but instead kept her unfailingly polite mask in place. She wasn’t on steady footing here—the ground was unfamiliar both literally and figuratively. As she figured, the more she adhered to what was expected, the more likely she was to be accepted.

Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of joining a herd?
The thought came unbidden upon her, some residual piece of doubt planted deep in her subconscious. Her being here was supposed to be about acceptance, and while she was always acting out the stereotypes she liked to define herself with... she wasn’t sure she wanted that permanently.

It meant she was going to live a lie.

You wanted this, Lilómiel told her. For once, there was no judgment to his comment; he was only reprimanding her and her indecision. They had spent many nights wandering alone, nights spent in darkness and solitude. She didn’t want it to be that way anymore. What she wanted was a purpose for her existence other than exploring dead-quiet wastelands.

And friendship, although she didn’t want to say it.

It is hardly a sacrifice, Nymeria thought; you don’t have a choice any other way.
Nobody would want her if they knew she was pumped full of the same poisonous ambition and black desires and malicious wants as her mother.

This was the only way.
“What do you mean by the Storyteller?” Nymeria asked, a brow raising in eloquent confusion. There was something to the way Isopia had pronounced it—the Storyteller, with the ‘s’ carefully enunciated—that implied it was a particular role rather than generic.