Imi's still waiting for our "mysterious stranger" to come...
Disclaimer: It be Alison Croggons. It be not mine.
Starlight twinkled in Imi's optics as she drank in the area around her, letting it fill her mind as she stood, giving the fraught creature time to think and calm herself.
The cloud of dust and dirt stirred by his arrival was the first thing the fea saw, though it had been only from the corner of her deep oculars. She stepped forwards in curiosity, and then drew back, uncertain, eyes shifting nervously while her hindquarters tensed, the muscles of her moonstruck haunches coiled as a spring, prepared at any moment to flee if the stranger should be one unwelcoming to such mares as she.
But soon a soft, gentle greeting that disappeared almost as soon as expelled from a pair of lungs resonated within her harks, welcoming and light, and she stiffened slightly from years of habit, then relaxed more than she had in days, even though she still knew not who followed.
Inwardly cursing herself for being so unobservant of any others in the area, the vixen's silver spotted neck moved sinuously as her sculpted head turned and tilted to gaze, surprised, at the stud before her.
Her first thought was that she was looking into a deep void, an empty hole where there was no color, only blackness. But as the moonlight skipped jovially over his masculine haunches and submersed itself within the etched features of his chest, she discovered the different hues his ebonite frame possessed, and dismissed that thought as ridiculous.
As her eager mocha orbs quickly gathered more information from his stark appearance, she felt the tension in her body slowly, slowly slip away. Nothing about his posture was hostile, although from the way he proudly carried himself upon his blackened pillars, she could easily tell he was one of power in these lands. He probably had his own band, she supposed, and the need for family quickly jumped into her mind before suppressed by other, warring emotions.
She observed silently a few seconds more before acknowledging his greeting, which in all reality had passed only moments previously, though her gleaning of knowledge seemed to have taken hours in her mind.
And yet, the moon remained in her place, suspended as she watched the scene play out before her of a meeting in the moonlight.
She dipped her head, letting the tendrils of her mane fall across her forehead in an ebonite wave that shifted colors in the light cast down by the sickle moon, concealing the shy, yet proud, mare that walked beneath its tender strands. The ivory and silver overcoat of hairs across her body shifted as her muscles moved to accommodate the shifting of her appendages as she turned fully to face him, a curious and polite expression sketched across her facade.
"Greetings, m'Lord," she said, addressing him politely and as best she could for being one so ignorant of their ways. "I be Imi, and I seek haven in your lands, if they might so accommodate me," she said, eyes flitting quickly away and back again. Her banner, starting grey but shifting to a deep, endless black as the strands grew thinner, swished softly, being the only sound in that moment other than the sounds of night. The very mistress who owned the tail was now holding her breath inside her delicate barrel, awaiting his response.
as you, too, reader, await his response, please review. Do it for Imi! I'll give you Imi-shaped cookies!!