Sweet bird song resonated above the trees, filling the air with spring’s gentle hymn. A lark soared past above their heads, lending its euphonious tune to the melody that echoed throughout the forest. Roland listened to the lilting refrain, moving so the water no longer lapped at his heels. He paused beneath the shelter of a tall oak that clung precariously to the sloping bank, misshapen leaves stretching overhead. They cast feeble shade across his features, painting him a darker hue of muted gold and bittersweet champagne. Dappled shadows spilled across his back, swaying as the wind stirred the young branches. Roland’s head dipped in acknowledgement as he listened to the dark mare, wondering at her kind and innocent manner. Were her mannerisms just a wall she’d erected for protection; a mask that hid her true being and disguised her honest thoughts? Yet not every being he met would reflect his personality; the tendency to portray a different character on the surface, while beneath he was only living a lie.

Was there no remedy for a silver tongue? He had not assumed that beginning a new page in his life would wipe the foregoing tales from the coveted document, that the impulse to toy with perception was too strong a habit to stray from. Yet he had hoped to control the addiction of manipulation that manifested in his heart and sugar coated every word with false emotion. His insides churned at her offer, and he turned his head away from her as if to gain a moment alone in thought. His eyes were shadowed by his silken forelock, russet mane plastered to his neck. The dampness had not yet been dried away by the caress of the early morning sun, and the cool dawn air bit into the blooming scarlet wounds dashed across his legs. Though the mud had been washed from his sleek pelt, the fresh lacerations were not so easily healed. They stung persistently with every breath of crisp wind against his body.

He did not want to waste her time, or have her feel she had spent the morning in conversation to no profitable result, but he was not yet ready to make the commitment required in a herd again. His thoughts needed collecting, organizing, analyzing; he would only pose a burden to her were he to accept her invitation. Perhaps he would wander deeper into this land, Helovia, and think over the offer; but he simply could not jump to the promise of loyalty without weighing the options that were presented to him at this crossroad. He did not trust easily. His sapphire eyes studied the rippling patterns that coursed across the pond, as if the deep water would hold the solution to his uncertainties.

“I think I must pass on your offer for now. My reasons are ah, complicated,” he explained vaguely, giving her an apologetic smile that revealed nothing of his thoughts. The expressions that played across his slender face were mere mockeries of the secrets and fragments of hidden past that flitted through his mind, but he appeared on the outside collected and orderly. A friendly stranger of respectable birth that had come in search of a new life; but it was not so. “You’ve piqued my interest, however. Tell me about your herd. ” Any information that she could offer him would be gladly taken, stored at the back of his mind lest it serve him some purpose later on. If he was on the borders of a new realm he did not want to walk into it blind.

walk walk walk
"talk talk talk"