Why did it feel like snakes were coiling around his limbs? As if the air grew charged, not with negative tension, but something else? Perhaps the reason his heart beat steadily, if fleet-footed in its pace, was the fact that he had unhinged his mind, disconnected, detached — detached from dreams and memories of white, forgetting about dreams to exist in the present, where he roamed with black wolves. Emotions were curious things, and for once, he'd rather let himself be filled up with them than pick them apart, scrutinize and analyze. Thinking would just hurt him, and his head, and this precious, fragile moment. Would it be so wrong, to simply enjoy life without a little thought? To drown the doubtful monsters and the pristine, snowy dreams? To simply reach out, grasp life, and live, even if only for a few minutes...

She was warm. It was like suddenly, acutely, becoming aware of that the body so close to his was real, alive, that blood moved through her veins with each beat of a heart he could not see. She was warm. She was near. She smelled, of horse and cold and female and Psyche, lingering traces of sun-sweat and the mineral smell of the Basin. With his muzzle so close to her shoulder.. he realized there was a sphere of air, just around her, which smelled so strongly of her he wondered why he hadn't really noticed it before. A deep breath was drawn in through flared nostrils. Her voice snapped him out of it, the arrogant tones not matching up with her grin; he gave her one of his own, a curl of his lips. "Expectations?" he rumbled, watching the skin of her neck fold intricately as it stretched on the other side before looking at her eyes. "Do you mean they would not follow you, if your mane was ruffled?"

Her soft, dark muzzle brushed against his, and for a moment he wished the moment would freeze there, forever, some obscure type of imperfect perfection, a knife in the heart and a skip of its beat. Warm breath streamed out of his nares in an exhalation, and when he inhaled again, it was the scent of her that filled his lungs and head. The light of her eyes was foreign, enticing, but he dared not look too long lest he lose himself, and drew forward half a step to tug at her dark locks. Her flank was against his shoulder, his barrel against her hip, and with each breath he could feel his body against hers. His breathing felt uneven all of a sudden, as if some strange emotion had swept through him; his muzzle rested almost against her neck. "I didn't know barbarians cared about good looks," he murmured.