Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lessia flexed her wing experimentally, allowing herself a small smile when the resultant pain was limited to a small twinge. It had been a few months now, and her physical injuries were making a better recovery than she had feared. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, she had pessimistically believed that her days of adventuring were over, to say nothing of her days of flight. The thought had depressed her, but it had been a mild depression in the grand scheme of things. She had had much bigger clouds hanging on her horizon than mere bodily injury.

Time was helping to heal her wounds, but her mental state still left a lot to be desired. She had thought her encounter with the fascinating dryad mare Amaltheia would help pull her out of her funk, but apparently the results had been temporary. For a little bit, she had felt better, but it hadn't taken long for her funk to return.

Lessia hated this. She, who had always been so confident, so fearless, had no business being brought low by such a thing as depression. But those were the cold, bald facts of the matter. And an equally cold, bald fact was that she didn't want to see hide nor hair of a non-related Kalona for a good long while!

Finishing her exercises with the damaged wing, Lessia shifted her attention to the other. This wing had escaped injury in the battle, but because she currently couldn't fly, even the muscles in her good wing were in danger of atrophy. So She tried to make a point of working the good as well as the bad, keeping the muscles alive and ready to go. She would be overcoming this injury; she would fly again. But until that time, she would just have to make do.

Back and forth, back and forth, stretch the muscles to their deepest extent, draw them back...

Wait.

Lessia always tried to focus on her exercises when she was doing them. She was no healer, but she'd been healed enough (and heard the spiel enough) to know that she needed to be attentive to what she was doing. Otherwise, she ran the risk of either overdoing it, or not working the damaged muscles enough. But attention or not, one simply couldn't 'turn off' the instincts of a lifetime.

Someone else was here. Someone who smelled like blood.

Kalona.

Involuntarily, her lip curled into a slight snarl. It would be a Kalona.

((note for Niss: Lessia is maxed out!))

Lessia didn't know what she was expecting, or what she was hoping for. She trusted her senses enough to know that her greatest hope, to have a long hiatus from Kalona, was already denied to her. But until the stallion stepped out of the undergrowth, she had no idea how unlikely that hope was to come true. By the time he emerged from the shadows, she had zeroed in on his location and was staring right at him as he strode toward her, confident and unafraid. From the tips of his curled horns to the end of his spaded tail, he was very much a Kalona...and very much covered in blood.

Subtly, Lessia shifted into a defensive stance as the stallion approached. Recent events had made her wary, and she wasn't going to take any chances of being caught unawares. She didn't even make a pretense of backing down, accepting the stallion's greeting with a clipped nod. "You're awfully far from the beaten path, Stallion. What brings you out to this part of the woods?" Judging from the blood, hunting was at least a small part of that reason; but who could say exactly what that blood was from?

He was getting too close, Lessia thought with an internal snarl. He was getting too close, and she wasn't sure what she’d be able to do if he decided to keep pressing that closeness. She’d definitely fight if pushed, but he had almost every physical advantage there was at the moment. But she wasn't going to let on to that fact; a weak animal was a prey animal, in the eyes of a Kalona. She might be injured, but she was not about to be prey! Fortunately, she didn't have to go any further than that thought, as the Kalona stallion came to an abrupt halt just beyond the reach of her legs. For a long moment, they simply stared at one another, sizing each other up further.

She didn't know what he was thinking as he studied her, but she doubted it was anything as innocent as what he said. ‘Exploring,’ indeed; as though a bloody Kalona was only out in these parts ‘exploring.’ Clearly he’d been hunting, whatever else he was doing, though she could concede that hunting and exploring could go hand in a hand for a Kalona. Still, she didn't trust him; whatever he was up to, it had to be devious. And she was in no mood to be gracious! “Perhaps you’re allowed, but that doesn't mean you’re welcome.”

What a smooth talker, Lessia thought with a newfound cynicism. It wasn't that long ago that she would have automatically taken the stallion at his word, feeling that the benefit of the doubt was the least she could extend to a fellow Kalona-lookalike. Yes, he might be an actual pure Kalona, but that never would have stopped her from being friendly in the past. Amazing how much can change in such a little time...but a lot can actually happen in a little time, she thought with a grim flex of her injured wing.

She was done with being trusting.

Her voice remaining cool, she shrugged off the stallion's words. "And I'm sure the assurances of a stranger covered in blood are all it takes the average Soquili to trust you implicitly; you certainly have that 'warm and fuzzy thing' going on," she said in a tone that dripped in sarcasm. "Though I do appreciate your understanding of the difficulties; perhaps since you're so very understanding, you could understand your way to a different place, a place where perhaps you would be more welcome company." Old Lessia would have been appalled to hear those words in any context; to hear them coming from her own mouth was something new entirely! But there were some things that New Lessia just had to do; among them, have her space. Particularly have her space from anyone that looked like a pure Kalona! And there was just something about this stallion that made her wary...