Welcome to Gaia! ::

The moon was rising now in the east, the sun's last orange rays fading in the west, when Mint returned to the spring. She had found the location earlier that day actually, but she'd also stumbled upon a pair of kin romping in the reeds and had slipped away as silently as she'd approached. However, there were limited sources of fresh water in this area, and, though she didn't need it, she found she often enjoyed drinking deep of clear water (one would think being deprived of such a luxury in the barrens of her birth would make her immune to such an indulgence, but not so). So she found herself drawn back to the place, now that evening had set in and the kin, by the long faded traces of their scent, had cleared out.

The brush near the spring rustled and then a white tipped muzzle emerged, followed by the rest of the emerald hued doe as she picked her way out from the underbrush with a delicacy too graceful to be deliberate. The freshwater spring she approached was truly a beautiful place, it was no surprise kin would choose its banks for their affairs. Set in the slope of a shallow hill, clear cool water burbled out into a sizable pool that could fit one or two of her kinfolk, then trickled off in a creek to join a stream that flowed further down. Silver in the moonlight, the water enticed her in a way she rarely let herself be enticed, and she stopped at the edge of the pool, dipping her muzzle down to the waters to take a drink.

Mint's ears flicked up at the sound of something in the bushes behind her, her head quickly lifting to turn her glowing gaze to the shadows, her stance wary. However, her caution quickly turned to surprise as a creature unlike anything she'd yet come across stepped out of the trees. Smaller than a kimeti, more delicate than a kiokote, with two sets of horns and a leafy tail... could this be the Acha cousins she had heard rumors of?

It was her curiosity that saved him after he opened his mouth, because while her eyes narrowed and her ears flicked back slightly at his words and his more than obvious intentions, she was still fascinated by the newness of the creature before her. "Good evening, cousin," she replied with a nod of her head, her voice clear and level, not the slightest bit moved by his compliment. "Forgive me if I am mistaken, but are you one of the desert-dwellers, the Acha?"

And the compliments showered forth, and she closed her ears after his admittance to being one of the desert dwellers. She wondered if all of them were this flirtatious... or this devoted to their little territories, she added to herself as she watched him feed the fish. A waste of plants really, unless he was intending to eat the fish as well, but something told her they were probably more for decor.

"My name is Mint," she replied almost automatically to his introduction, "And yes, this place is quite nice," though she hadn't seen any of the other dwellers here as of yet. "Are you recently arrived to the Swamp?" If so, he had settled down quite fast.

Mint was never one to turned down offered sustenance, and fish did indeed sound appealing. She approached the water, dipping her hooves in slowly so as to not disturb the gathering fish, but they tamely swamp up to her after a moment, as if thinking they might find food in the fur of her ankles. She watched them through narrowed glowing eyes, then suddenly her head darted forwards, flipping a fish up into the air in a shower of spray, catching it deftly in her mouth and flinging it to shore before it could squirm away. She climbed out of the pool after it, watching it wriggle as she lightly shook water from her coat.

"Thank you for the meal."

She didn't care for this buck. She knew that in her bones. But he was offering her sustenance, something she innately would not turn down, and civility was thus required of her. Antagonism was no way of being grateful. So she obliged him, scraping the scales off the fish with her teeth, then nudging it towards him, for the application of the berries.