El Aran spotted the sorrel mare as she crested the dune and felt her legs tremble with relief. Aşk, teşekkür ederim. Vesti called out a greeting, and had El Aran not been trying to escape her son’s attention (if he were anywhere nearby, which she fervently hoped was not the case) she would have responded in kind. Instead she picked up her pace and jogged down the other side of the dune to enter the small oasis at a trot. The black mare slowed but did not stop until her cheek was parallel to Vesti’s— much closer to the mare than she had ever been before.

"Vesti." She spoke quietly, and made the mare’s name a greeting. "Trouble has come, and in a worse guise than I had first imagined. You recall our conversation yesterday?" El Aran’s gaze had been focused beyond the mare but as she spoke it shifted to her companion’s face: pretty but undished, thank the gods. El Aran hated the concave aspect of her own muzzle. It wasn’t nearly as pronounced as a Purebred Arabian’s, but it was still noticeable. From a distance one might assume she was an Arabian, but up close it was obvious the black mare came from mixed blood.

It was what had damned her in the eyes of the Purebreds before she had even been born, and El Aran had worn the sins of her parents on her face for as long as she’d been alive. Everyone who saw her hated her on sight. Just as they’d hated the Purebreds who had left their herds or been banished, and had come together in a mixing of cultures and bloodlines that the Arabians and Akhal-Tekes judged to be unholy. The only sin El Aran had committed herself was one that she couldn’t have controlled any more than the fact of her birth, and it was one that had prompted her to leave the desert in an attempt to protect those who remained of her herd.

After all, a horse with bloodlines like hers couldn’t be a seer. It was blasphemous.

"I saw the Arabian you spoke of," El Aran offered in a heavy voice. "Have you seen her again? Or any others in our desert?" The black mare still considered herself a part of the herd, even if Orhan did not. She would do her duty as lead mare and protect their grazing and watering areas to ensure the survival of the herd.