"...you know, I've heard the ballads, but they're never too straightforward - what is your job?"

:Well. I'm your Companion. I'm here to take you where you need to go - to stay with you in the darkest times, to ensure you do what's right - and, on a more day-to-day level, drag you to the Healers when you say you're barely scratched, or meddle with your love life via the herd if you get dazzled by a fellow Herald:

That shocks a giggle out of her. "You're more frank than the ballads say, too. They paint you all very cagey."

:Most of us are. I've been called a bit of an outlier... among other things:

"Oh. Are there... companion-cliques?"

:Nothing quite so human. But I was never Taver's favorite - he's the Groveborn, the leader of the herd. He thinks I'm impulsive, and that I don't have the proper respect for tradition:

"Tradition!" Sufya grimaces. "Tradition would have me still selling my damned hats."

:...you made hats?:

"Yes, and I was quite good at it. But I don't think it's my path, not anymore."

Snort. :Sorry, bit of a tangent. Yes, tradition has its place, but...: He shakes his head. :Mmph. He didn't even really want me Choosing so soon - I'm barely out of my last growth:

"...how old are you?"

:Five summers:

"Kernos' horns, you're a foal!"

:I am not! Companions grow quickly, and - I'm not a foal, I'm fully-grown:

"Oh, I'm just sniping because you called me a teenager earlier."

Out of curiosity, she shuts her eyes and opens the little third-eye in her head, the one that lets her see (what might very well be) people's souls as mannequins. She's curious, now, what she'll find.

...he's a bit irritated. It shows in the amount of red he's wearing - though it's mostly embellishment over apple-yellow amusement, he's not really mad.

He loves her. She's never been to the sea, she can't compare it to anything she's seen - maybe the sky, if instead of clouds and blue it were full to bursting with boundless love, unconditional and immediate and all for her. It's not in what he's wearing, it's in his heart and in his head and everywhere else.

And there's - two mannequins of him. One is in the shape of a stallion, like the rest of him, wearing a simple leather-and-steel bridle against some rather elaborate emotional barding. The other is a slender little man, his spiky hair a dull strawberry-blonde, in Herald's Whites. (Alongside his emotion-clothes. People can wear rather a lot of outfits at once, she's found, in her Sight.)

Huh. She opens her eyes again.

"Sorry," she says, petting his short mane. "I suppose it might wear on me too, being called a child."

:Oh, you don't need to be sorry:

"I'd rather not get into the habit of sniping at you just because you'll always love me."

:But Chosen, it's what we're for. Like those bean-bags you give to children so they can throw them at trees until they explode:

(He's teasing. Companions are for a different thing than that. [In theory.])

"Now you're just being horrible on purpose."

:I'm obeying the inscrutable exhortations of my soul,: Astirin says piously.

"Your soul is admirably committed to the bit."

:Comes of being a horse:

Sufya cackles. "Awful," she says, trying to keep her position in the saddle.