Styrke. The name branded itself within her memory, though she’d never heard it before and could attach neither a face nor a scent to it. Impa glanced down at the little grulla as Mouse pressed herself against the draft mare’s side. Thought her body was still tight with anger, she reached down to nibble on her friend’s coarse mane in an attempt to comfort her. Impa kept all of her rage balled up within her chest, though she could feel it rising and threatening to choke her as Mouse continued to speak as if Styrke’s actions had been of no consequence. She seemed more concerned about the foal she would soon give birth to than the trauma in her past.

It made sense that Mouse’s attention would be more focused on a present concern than an event of the past, but Impa still wondered, as she tugged distractedly on her friend’s mane, if Mouse had not simply blocked the horror of the event from her mind. Maybe her amnesia was her way of coping with things too terrible to acknowledge. “You’ll know,” Impa said, and hoped her anger did not make her voice shake too noticeably. “At least, the mares in my father’s herd never seemed too concerned when they were pregnant. I think caring for a foal is instinctual. But I’ve never had one.” She lifted her nose away from Mouse and took a deep breath. “Anath might know more. Or Ardea, Giselle’s mother. My own dam never told me anything.” Not that Impa had ever made much of an effort to spend time with her mother. Her interests had never lain in getting pregnant and having babies, anyway. The information which had seemed useless then now seemed more precious than anything else— if she’d taken the time to learn it, instead of selfishly assuming it would never benefit her to know, maybe she would have been able to ease Mouse’s concerns with some amount of confidence in what she was talking about.

Her nose wrinkled at the thought of a stallion entering the Peak and attempting to force a mare to leave with him. Typically they’d only had to deal with bachelors from the Lagoon who seemed to have nothing better to do. It was rare to see a band stallion in the Peak. Impa wondered if Styrke lived in the Lagoon or had his own territory. “He won’t take you away,” she said, and of that she was certain. “He’ll have to get through me to do it. And there are very few horses on these islands as big as I am, Mouse.” She pinched her lips together, then blew them out to make a thoughtful popping sound. “Can you tell me anything about him?” she asked carefully.