you got easy eyes to hunt
and the world above needs your blood

Black Heart Machine, this mare whose presence both made Dock intrigued and nervous, said she knew the stallion that resided in the forest. Dock’s ears swiveled and she appeared truly curious, wondering. Both of them were strangers to her. Strange stallions she knew little of other than an exchange of breaths. It hadn’t taken Hickere and Dickere any time to decide the forest is where the three of them would live the rest of their days and, quite frankly, Dock was unsettled.

The grounds for argument she was standing on were flimsy, however. Any stallion they would have wound up with at home would have been a stranger until they got to know him, after all. Yet Dock wanted to find the reasons to be unhappy and she would. “I don’t.” She finally confessed in an exhale, as though saying such a thing had been difficult. The nervousness that flitted across her features was born of a fear she would be laughed at for saying it. That she might be told all she needed was time to get to know the stallions at the forest.

Yet when the black mare spoke again her words were impossible to ignore. The curiosity was already there in Dock’s mind, swirling and curling around her tongue to make certain she furthered this conversation. “There is?” She asked, blue eyes wide and unwavering as she watched this strong mare before her. “Like… Like what?” Her heartbeat kicked up in her chest in excitement, though Dock did not understand its implications.