El Aran let her eyelids droop half-closed as she stared out into the rain. The gentle tug on her mane as her son worked out the wet tangles that hung like black clots of blood against her neck was comforting. She could not recall ever sharing a moment as tender with Encantador, not that she had ever encouraged affection from him. Her physical interactions with others were typically limited to aggressive actions and fights, the only exception being her foals. Even then, El Aran was not indulgent. Grooming was something she attended to strictly when necessary. She did not have the patience to stand under the ministrations of another horse when just out of sight there might be danger lurking, waiting for her to let down her guard. Even after just under a decade of being away from the war, El Aran could not let it go.
The proximity of her son and his heat, combined with the suffocating humidity of the Desert air, soon dried the black mare’s coat. It itched. She turned her head to drag her teeth across her barrel as her son pulled away to speak. His remark earned him a short, low chuckle from the seer, and she turned her head to regard him with one bright black eye. "Perhaps," she agreed. Her gaze shifted to the taut curve of his belly as he stepped away and gestured at himself, and she frowned to see patches of his hair entirely gone. "It must be the moisture. It is uncommon, here, and you are young yet. Your skin will toughen as you age." Her gaze traveled back up to his face. "Your hair will grow back, and you will be gold all over like the sands of our home once more."
The black mare of the desert turned her head to stare out beyond the curtain of rain again. Gold to complement the faded ash of Encantador’s coat, the father her son would never meet. Orhan was the second child she had raised with no contact from the stallion who’d sired him. Her second son. There was a time she never would have considered herself allowed to bear a child. Maybe her choice to carry a second one had affected the clarity of her dreams— hadn’t she thought the same thing after she’d dropped Iskelet? She dipped her head and sniffed the dry and dusty ground between her hooves. It was moments like these she wished Dany had not disappeared. Her friend had a wise head on such young shoulders.
el aran
Seer of Aşk. |