The woman’s moods are like branches beneath a hurricane wind, whipping this way and that with sudden and overwhelming force, leaving the old stallion confused and disoriented by the whirlwind around him. One moment she's smiling, laughing, the next she rounds on him with an intention so openly hostile that he bristles in anticipation of an attack. Illogically, she bends her head to nose him instead, nuzzling with a tenderness he wouldn’t have guessed she possessed, though it quickly dissipates, her velvet lips parting and pressing her teeth too harshly against his skin, pinching, biting without restraint.

He stands immobile still, though his skin twitches and his muscles tauten beneath her gnawing, waiting to see if the pendulum of her emotions might swing once more away from ferocity and violence, and to his enormous relief, it does. She pauses, then storms away from him with another squeal, the sharp sound ricocheting off his back turned ears and shuddering through his tensed form. Grateful to face only the onslaught of her voice now, he can't help but sigh.

What the fuck is this bitch? He wonders, and when she speaks his head falls sideways, cocked in disbelief, unable to fathom that the previous display was meant to be something of romance. Her mocking accusation draws a flicker of anger across his features, all due offense taken on behalf of his manly endowments, but though sharp words prick at the inner tissues of his mouth, eager to leap to self-righteous freedom in the air between them, he sets his jaw, too wary of the white woman’s unpredictability to risk inciting another bout of flirtation.

He steps backward, keeping sight of the disconcerting soldier as long as possible before sweeping his head downward, gently grabbing his companion by the middle and hopping over the small lip where stone meets turf around the boundary of the hot springs, his weathered hooves finding comfort and traction in the soft soil of the Basin's valley. The python hanging in his mild grasp squirms, twisting and coiling until it is he that has the stallion by the face and not the other way around, where the black releases his grip, allowing the snake to drag himself over one brow and to the base of his horns, the tiny heartbeat in the back of his mind only then beginning to slow.

The grizzled face turns back mid-stride, eyes guarded as he declares, "You're insane."


"Talk."
OOC // @Beloved