Africa was an expressive, emotional soul, and touch and intimacy were two powerful characteristics which flowed true through her gentle nature. To her, it was a means to communicate, a way to tell someone how she felt about them or about her environment. When the stallion startled at her kind touch, she was caught off guard too, and more still when his cutting, merciless drone pushed her compassionate advance away. "Don't touch. The feeling is unwelcome here." Young and sensitive, she was a little hurt, though boldly she masked her disappointment and continued as normal allowing a polite arms length between them as he (inadvertently or not) requested, dropping behind to trail his set path.

Trying to extract any sort of emotion or sentiment from him was difficult, and though she was enduring and exceedingly persistent in all respects, melancholy was stirring in the pits of her effervescent soul. He finally offered his name to her, "Shajake," and the lively swing of her long legs staggered for a brief moment. The name was familiar, and as she traced back to the initiation of their accidental meeting, she remembered that he had stuttered something rather along those lines before insisting that he was no villain. Unfazed, Africa smiled and stepped forward through the sodden turf and churned mud again, careful to stay well clear of his swishing tail and burly rocking hindquarters.

“I am Africa.” She responded quickly and easily, the lightness of her feminine voice never once betraying the upset in her young, impressionable heart. Then she added out of habit- “From Dragon’s Throat.” A storm of curious questions surged through her mind, yet as she absentmindedly watched the point of his hock flex beneath his transferring weight, a hefty silence formed between them- it lingered for a good part of their journey to Shajake’s tree; an old twisted oak with no leaves, only thick branches to offer them respite from the rain.

“Have you got a home?” Africa asked finally once they had gathered themselves in relative comfort upon reaching their final destination. It was a well rehearsed question, one that she used often when drifting between weary wanderers in the Threshold. But on this occasion she wasn’t exactly extending the invitation. She had not yet come across one who had not ventured out from the thick of herd-life; everyone seemed to belong to somewhere. She knew that there were some who preferred to live a solitary life in ‘the wilds’, not that such appealed to her in the slightest, and wondered often during her play when she would happen upon one of them. Quite honestly, she thought Shajake fitted the mold of an outcast perfectly- quite without judgement of course. He just seemed... different.