inka

After her meeting with Skylar, Inka fell once more into a short period of reclusiveness. Her desire to remain alone was not due to depression, as it had once been, but more due to the fact that she was in no particular hurry to meet the others. Once she became familiar with the Peak mares – and especially once she sought out Impazienza and discussed her place here – that was it: she was home. And while she was looking forward to starting a new life here, she needed a few weeks of space, of peace and quiet with her thoughts, and time to enjoy the change of seasons. Her life had been purgatory up to this point, and she needed an interlude.

The Peak might have been cooler than its surrounding lowlands, but summer eventually came for it all the same, its reach extending to even the summit, where it melted the snow that had sat there for months like a little white cap. Inka’s thick, dark coat shed out, leaving her sleek and gleaming, and she regained some of the weight she had lost. She thought often of Skylar, and wondered how she and her twins fared; she refused, however, to think of her father or of Marei, and when she felt herself straying too near those bad memories, she would find the nearest stretch of relatively flat, open ground and gallop until her lungs ached. When running was not an option, sleep was another effective way of emptying her mind.

Then one day she woke up and felt the familiar ache of loneliness in her chest. It was time.

Strangely, she found herself a little nervous as she followed one of the deer trails that snaked through the trees on the Peak’s lower slopes. “You will know her when you see her”, Skylar had said, but even so, Inka clung to what little information she had about Impazienza: that she was big and black and blanketed. In the past few weeks she thought she had seen the mare from afar, once or twice, but now she had little idea of where to search for her. Thus she placed her trust in her senses, and followed the faint scent of other horses to a large open area bathed in sunlight (which happened to be one of the places she’d galloped across just days before).

Though she could see no one, the scents were strongest here. Perhaps someone is nearby? Inka stood patiently on the soft, springy grass and tested the air before emitting a soft, beckoning nicker. If anyone answered her call at all, she did not expect she was lucky enough for it to be the Peak leader herself, but no doubt whomever she found would at least be able to point her in Impazienza’s general direction.

As the moments passed, she felt the cloying sensation of sweat begin to creep along her skin. It was a warm day, warmed all the more by the anxious flutter of her heart.

thirteen – 17hh – friesian