She wandered north, south, east, west—from the coldest reaches of the Frostbreath Steppe to the nebulous warmth of Helovia's Heart, passing through every imaginable biome in her travels. Never had she had the desire—or had wanted to bother with the effort—of seeking her fortune in the Threshold. Every native Helovian knew what the Threshold meant: a sea of smells, a swarm of bodies, a thousand hungry voices pulling the
new meat every which way. Why would she (elegant, a composition of swarthy shadow and white teeth) bother herself with the tedium of recruiting?
That is the question, she mused, picking her way through with forest with fierce carefulness. Where others blundered in their anger, or simmered in their rage, she instead became agonizingly crisp in her movements, every twitch of her hips a call to war and her every lovingly-placed hoof a demand for battle. Her dragon (instead of doing something useful) lounged upon her withers in regal disregard for everything.
You can think of it as hunting.
No. I don't hunt horses.
(Who was who? It is always hard to say.)
Nymeria lifted her head, ears flicking forward to catch a crash of movement, a murmur of voices. As much as anything she wanted to leave the scene before the vultures came swooping in—but instead, disgruntled and dismayed at her own initiative, she broke into a languid, long-strided trot.
(She was headed towards the scene.)
The first victim was a unicorn, as deep blue as the night sky and her spine scattered in starlight. She did not smell like the wilds but of warm bodies, winter nights, and minerals. Her eyes were grey (like stone, Nym thought automatically) but her presence was neither daunting nor intimidating. The second victim, dark charcoal fringed in ivory and sapphire, took up a similar amount of space, and smelled also of a herd.
Nymeria corrected herself: vultures, not victims.
Her head swung in a poisonous arc to the left, contemptuous and vaguely bad-tempered (but perhaps spared the adjective of venomous) and she flared her nostrils wide, drinking in the scents of those at hand. And a third: there was a third scent, quite clearly distinguishable from the rest. Lilómiel, curiosity piqued, rustled his wings, jaws snapping together in a sharp and happy bark; Nym glanced back at him, snorted viciously, and cast her gaze back to the bushes.
The others were painfully gentle, and Nymeria was ferociously tired of being here already, so she kept her mouth shut.
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