Dante could not have heard her call him—it was impossible—yet his ears pricked up. He became suddenly alert. He stood rigidly for a few long minutes, eyeing the glowing pink horizon suspiciously. He had been stood grazing quietly in the tree line, when all of a sudden he felt overcome by a feeling of self-consciousness—like he was being watched.

It was a foolish notion, but unshakeable all the same.

He waited to catch sight of the cause of his paranoia, but nothing stirred. And then, just as he was about to lower his head and settle again, the scent hit him. Her scent hit him. Maltese. Could it really be? Dante had not seen her in such a long time, yet her familiar scent was forever embedded in his memory.

They had been close once—very close—until she had started avoiding him and eventually disappeared altogether. He could not deny that he had been hurt; without a reason for her behaviour, he had assumed that he had done something to upset her, and withdrew his efforts to find her. He missed her, and he thought about her often, but Dante had long since resigned himself to the fact that Maltese had left him, and she wasn’t coming back.

And yet, despite the hurt and confusion she had caused him, his heart still leapt to realise she had returned. Suddenly excited, he marched purposefully across the sandy beach, his sleek red coat glimmering in the fading sunlight, in search of his visitor. It didn’t take him long to locate her, and as soon as he saw her familiar silhouette on the horizon he started to run.

He tossed his head, and whinnied shrilly, removing the distance between them in a few seconds. Clumsily, he slowed to a halt, gold-white sand flying from beneath his hooves. He would have continued towards her, to wrap himself around her, but he spotted the child then, and his mismatched eyes widened, stopping him in his stride.

You could almost hear the cogs whirring in Dante’s brain as his time with Maltese flashed before his eyes, a series of flashing images and almost-forgotten sights, smells and sounds. His gaze slid blankly over the colt at her side: he was not newborn, but obviously still very young. She had been gone for so long...

“Maltese...” he murmured weakly, gaze still on the youngster. He was shell-shocked to say the least. “I-is this..?”

DANTE
a man possessed of some radical notions