<3 WC: 339
The woman took Fuerte's lead rope when it was proffered, gaze never drifting from Saluce's face as she listened raptly to his instructions. The stallion danced further behind her, drooping his head over her shoulder. This sole act caused Desi to glance away, partially with worry that the grullo was attempting to take fingers off, but the stallion was being loving, at least a little. She stroked his nose gently, watching the lovely brown eyes shift warily from Charlemagne to Saluce and back again. Saluce was right; Fuerte was scared by him and the huge horse he rode. Occasionally she nodded, signalling understanding of the horseman's words, and she had just looked up when he looked toward her.
She let a smile shine from her face, and just as she did, a breeze played through the longer fur at her mane, elbows, sides, sweeping it forward. She would have to take Fuerte out and let him open his throttle a bit, she decided. It would be good for him and good for them. Perhaps she could ride Fuerte to Dahlia de Mai and back sometimes... Her mind's eye envisioned herself and Saluce, in the barn or wherever he kept that monstrous Charlemagne, on the beach, even riding atop... Wait, would that one even work? Well they could certainly try it and see!
His gentle touch across her cheek stirred her from her thoughts, and between the touch and his compliment that followed, a blush flowed to the surface of her cheeks. He thought she was pretty? You really think so? I don't know of any wolf who's so much as spared a moment's thought to me. She pressed her face softly against his paw, nuzzling her mostly tan snout against his muscled forearm. She wanted to ask him if he would be that wolf following her wherever she went, but she did not know how he would react, and she was afraid that he would simply jump atop his mount and ride off into her sunset, never to return.