[Hayame should have left. She should have scoffed over this stranger’s dismissal, turned, and denied him… But she had been unable to ignore the all too familiar tone she thought she heard in his voice, and now a mere minute later it is too late to retreat without loss of face. Not for her. Not for the rigid code of honor and misplaced pride that continued to rule her life long after others in this place seem to think she should have abandoned the ways of her world for a new order.
He raises his voice, and whether she understands it as a design intended to make her out to the others around them as some irrational aggressor in the wrong or not… It cements her actions. It binds her to him as steadily as any rope or chain, because now… now people are looking, raising eyebrows, murmuring behind glasses, and so now…
She cannot show weakness. She cannot back down and let him “win”. She cannot hide the raw, unbridled anger in her one remaining eye when he speaks it plainly what that word had meant.
“Slave”. She had spent her entire life desperately pretending that she was not that. She had been bred by human hands, raised by human hands, and taught just enough to make her seem better than those not. She had been made an overseer over the “lesser” members of her kind, those broken from the wild or disobedient enough to have their arms flensed from their shoulders, and she had been allowed to think… she would not be a simple mount. If she was good enough, strong enough, loyal enough… she could escape the fate of being sold as a broodmare and become a warhorse, she could prove herself on the battlefield and maybe, just maybe, be given enough dignity to think herself a person-
And she’d been wrong.
This man lays bare those resentments and pains all too easily with haughty, proud words that accuse her of overreacting. And he is not wrong- that is what galls the most. Her temper had been on a hair trigger for months, her grip on the cold, calm warrior she’d always striven to be slipping every day since she’d been spirited from her world and now-
Now she lashes out. Apparently he isn’t stupid, he seems to notice and try to twist away but the lounge is in his way and she is fast. She is strong by nature of her race as well as her training, and he may be nearly her height but the muscles of her deceptively human-looking upper half are knit together far differently beneath her hide. It isn’t actually physically difficult to snare him… nor to lift him off the ground with hands fisted in his robes as if he were a feather pillow, jerking without regard for comfort or bruising to bring him close enough to smell meat and wine on her breath, canines too sharp to look as if they belonged to either human or horse snapping inches from his face.]
Give me one good reason not to show you in front of everyone here exactly what I did to my master’s men.
[Technically… what she would do, once she could return to her world, but. Her mind and it’s bitterness weren’t just her own. They were his problem, now, too.]
I AM SORRY for this fight and also this long ass tag
You insulted me.
[Hayame should have left. She should have scoffed over this stranger’s dismissal, turned, and denied him… But she had been unable to ignore the all too familiar tone she thought she heard in his voice, and now a mere minute later it is too late to retreat without loss of face. Not for her. Not for the rigid code of honor and misplaced pride that continued to rule her life long after others in this place seem to think she should have abandoned the ways of her world for a new order.
He raises his voice, and whether she understands it as a design intended to make her out to the others around them as some irrational aggressor in the wrong or not… It cements her actions. It binds her to him as steadily as any rope or chain, because now… now people are looking, raising eyebrows, murmuring behind glasses, and so now…
She cannot show weakness. She cannot back down and let him “win”. She cannot hide the raw, unbridled anger in her one remaining eye when he speaks it plainly what that word had meant.
“Slave”. She had spent her entire life desperately pretending that she was not that. She had been bred by human hands, raised by human hands, and taught just enough to make her seem better than those not. She had been made an overseer over the “lesser” members of her kind, those broken from the wild or disobedient enough to have their arms flensed from their shoulders, and she had been allowed to think… she would not be a simple mount. If she was good enough, strong enough, loyal enough… she could escape the fate of being sold as a broodmare and become a warhorse, she could prove herself on the battlefield and maybe, just maybe, be given enough dignity to think herself a person-
And she’d been wrong.
This man lays bare those resentments and pains all too easily with haughty, proud words that accuse her of overreacting. And he is not wrong- that is what galls the most. Her temper had been on a hair trigger for months, her grip on the cold, calm warrior she’d always striven to be slipping every day since she’d been spirited from her world and now-
Now she lashes out. Apparently he isn’t stupid, he seems to notice and try to twist away but the lounge is in his way and she is fast. She is strong by nature of her race as well as her training, and he may be nearly her height but the muscles of her deceptively human-looking upper half are knit together far differently beneath her hide. It isn’t actually physically difficult to snare him… nor to lift him off the ground with hands fisted in his robes as if he were a feather pillow, jerking without regard for comfort or bruising to bring him close enough to smell meat and wine on her breath, canines too sharp to look as if they belonged to either human or horse snapping inches from his face.]
Give me one good reason not to show you in front of everyone here exactly what I did to my master’s men.
[Technically… what she would do, once she could return to her world, but. Her mind and it’s bitterness weren’t just her own. They were his problem, now, too.]