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"Spirit of the moment milady, I often get carried away when I meet strangers from faraway places." He replied easily, letting the blunt edge of her words slide off his back like water from an otter. "And I am simply Flame." He added, half bowing again... which made him accutely aware of the now stinging wounds.

Trust that once his anger faded the bloody things would hurt like the damnedest hells.

Snorting he moved to the side and out of the water, loosing the seawater from his coat with a furious shake. The urge to drop and roll was strong... but he doubted that getting sand in the cuts would help any.

Nostrils flared, Flame tossed his head and whickered with laughter. "Aye, my son is a rambunctious one! But no milady, these are... accidents." He concluded, curving his neck around to peer at the gashes on his side narrowly.

At length he sighed and looked at the bay mare again.

"Have you a son?"

Flame arched an eyebrow at the mention of the sire, and Princess's obvious.. disdain... for him. He himself had had a less then pleasant experience with the mother of his children, and was quite certain she spoke of him with a flash in her eye and a angry quiver to her lip. Not that she was completely wrong in her view of him... he had left her afterall.

"You have my sympathy then, my blood son was quite the ah... hellion, when he came back into my life."

Oddly, it was from Blais that he knew he had a daughter, somewhere. Funny that, he really always thought of himself as a family man.

He toyed briefly with the idea of shoving his own hoof in his mouth... back into his life indeed! But the look in the mare's eyes and the tone in her voice elicited a tiny injection of 'stiff' into his spine. He might have erred, but he was in no mood to be judged by this stranger.

"That would be a story for a long night by a fire, but suffice to say his mother's herd kept his, and my daughter's, existence from me. They fed him lies about me and set him on a trail for vengence. " he paused, suppressing the usual rage that clouded his vision when he thought of the disgusting policies that governed his old herd. They had seen the father's fee-spirit in the son, and sought to ostracize the painted colt the same way they had his sire.

"It was difficult to convince him that I was not an adulterous freeloader, but given time he came around." he finished, grinning again with a great deal of effort.

Her impassive face, followed by her question, brought the feeling of being judged to a head, and though he whipped his tail angrily; Flame kept his temper on a short rein. He'd already done enough stomping and snorting for one day.

"It takes a greater effort to know ones self, rather then to image ones self after what one thinks one should be." he replied, flaging his tail and arching his neck proudly. "I know I am not what those tyrannical elders branded me, nor am I the epitome of Perfection. I am but myself, flawed and free to run the length of this world as I see fit without fear of retribution for being who I am." The last was said with a rebellious lift of his head, a throw-back to his younger years when those same elders and tried to make him settle; take a mate, breed an abundance of foals, and die an honorable death defending the herd from marauding predators and rival stallions.

"The same can be said of the stallion I am proud to call my son, though I cannot say that the mare I thought my equal thought the same. Blais was left to the tender mercies of decrepit elders from a dying era, berefit of the teachings I had thought we shared." The last was said ruefully, almost sadly, since Flame blamed himself for not being there to save his son, as he blamed his former lover for not telling him of the colts existence.

His eyes flared again, and he regarded her with a veiled look of contempt. Had she missed his point entirely?

"I am myself, and that which makes a soul what they are cannot be summed up in a single conversation." He said with the conviction of true-believer, tossing his head to emphasize his point. "It can takes years to uncover, and longer yet to accept; then there is the inevitable change that makes prior conclusions irrelevant." He paused, suddenly aware that he was ranting, and subsided, though the tension never left his body.

Releasing a gentle snort he shook out his heavily braided mane, made aware again of his smarting wounds. "I know that I care for my family, and I know my ethical code. The rest, well that is why I am alive... to discover it." he finished, on a much quieter note.

Ten years ago he would have gotten angry.

Ten years ago, he probably would have moved on by now if he hadn't gotten her to say more then her name, or.. if nothing else... gotten her into a thicket.

Ten years ago though, he had been a real moron.

Now, he just stared at her, wondering at her audacity and her pride... and coming up with the notion that hers was a match for his.

So all he did was laugh, long... hard... and completely. The feeling perforated all the way from his eartips to his feet and he tossed his head back again, accentuating the free feeling of a good laugh with the seabreeze in his mane.

"Oh, dear me. A more stupid stallion you say." he gasped between gales of laughter. "Well I am ever-pleased to have impressed you milady, but I must say.." and his lowered his tone, all traces of laughter gone from his features. "That you have just insulted yourself most grievously." Then he shrugged, and looked away, casting his eyes towards the distant mountain range.

"Being impressed for such a silly thing... honestly." He resisted the urge to glance coyly back over his shoulder, and instead settled for a more relaxed posture and a twitch at the corners of his muzzle that hide a growing internal smile.

Again he shrugged, and let a long silence drag on before idly flicking his tail close enough to, perhaps, brush against her hind legs.

"Such strong thoughts milady, but what if such a conversation as this were but the tip of the iceberg?" He asked, moving away to paw at the crashing waves.

"Afterall, this has mostly been a talk about who I am, and who you are... which you have yet to go into detail about." he quipped, half turning to shoot her a wide grin. "But what if we spoke of the cosmos, of destiny and of the threads that tie individuals together?" his tone turned slightly wistful as he looked upwards to the hidden expanse of sky. "What would you think of a long talk about birth... death.. and the millions of ways a soul can live between the two?"