<font color=#e4e0d7><i>�Beware she who suckles from the Walking Mare.�</i></font>

Your King Asmodeus
Your Queen ~~Nyimara~~
The Second None
The Herd Name, Name, Name		The Sub-Herd Name, Name, Name
Allies Name (Land)		Enemies Solomon (Cove)
The Rules There will be no fraternizing with enemies. If you put yourself knowingly in danger, don't expect a rescue. We are only as strong as our weakest link. See to it that you are getting stronger in some skill that is useful, whether it is battling, recruiting, charming, etc. The King and Queen have final say in all matters.

�Beware she who suckles from the Walking Mare.�
Posted on June 9, 2015 at 07:38:11 PM by el halin

El Halin

Little has happened within the small herd in the Desert since El Halin�s arrival. She has not gotten to know the other mares of the herd and has not spoken with the head breeder a second time, and she has less than zero interest in spending any time with the visually crippled male who may or may not still be lingering in the territory. Most of this is the High Seer�s fault, and she accepts the fact that her priorities have lain elsewhere for the past two weeks or so. Today, she decides, she will approach the first member of the herd she comes across and do what she can to form a bond. It disgusts her, mildly, the lengths she has to go to for the greater good of all equine kind, but not to the point where it ruffles her expression or sours her mood. There is work to be done, and El Halin is here to do it.

She is resting beside the low pool in the oasis when she reaches this decision, one hind hoof cocked and fine head hanging with her eye half-closed as she dozes in the heavy heat of the sun, and her thoughts are becoming fuzzier by the second as she slips closer to a doze when a call interrupts the quiet. It is a sound fraught with pain on a level that transcends the physical, in the kind of voice El Halin has only heard from her people when they have returned with less forces than they set out with during a skirmish. The voice that drags her head up and brings her to full alertness does not belong to any Arabian she knows. It sounds like one of the mares she met earlier, during the meeting, although she cannot retrieve a name for the long face that flashes through her mind.

Show time, she thinks, nostrils flaring instinctively as she pulls in the familiarly foreign scents of the horses she lives with. The High Seer gives her whole body a shake and steps out at a trot to go meet the wounded mare, who she finds in a short amount of time heading for the oasis. El Halin slows as she nears, moving smoothly over the flat, packed sands as she runs her dark eyes across the wounds on the other mare�s shoulders, hips, and neck.

The High Seer�s step does not falter as she frowns, recognizing the injuries across the mare�s richly colored coat as evidence of sexual violence. Rape exists in the Arabian culture, but the mares control it now, and it took centuries to achieve, eventually succeeding in turning a barbaric bunch of breeders into civilized soldiers who understood they were not entitled to sex, and teaching the stallions to earn that privilege rather than force themselves on one of their own kind. Forced breeding is only inflicted on the horses unfortunate enough to be demoted to the lowliest rank in an Arabian herd, and it is done only to ensure that the colts abandoned by their higher ranked mothers might survive to fight when they�ve grown. All offspring produced by the mares and stallions of such a rank are executed after the first feeding, to ensure that the mother is producing milk and can do her duties to the herd by acting as a wet-nurse for more valuable foals. El Halin can acknowledge how barbaric her people�s customs may seem from the outside, but in truth it is a rare thing that happens nowadays, and something initially set into action for political reasons. She will not apologize for it, for she had nothing to do with it: it was her ancestors who introduced the practice, and it has served her people well.

Except for those who deserted and began their own herds with similarly disgruntled �Tekes, something that the High Seer believes had more to do with the war in their desert than Iftikhar�s silly speculations about some rangy gray breeder from their ally�s herd.

She shakes her head, snorts, and swings around in a wide arc to fall into step beside the white and champagne colored mare. El Halin extends her nose in a gesture of sympathy and an offer of comfort in lieu of a greeting, noting as she does so that this is the mare who brought the deformed breeder into the oasis like some kind of orphan. This is not, however, the time to delve into the motivations behind the nameless mare�s actions, and El Halin reins her mind in sharply from her multiple tangents to focus entirely on her herd mate. �What has happened?� she asks, not breaking stride. �Who has attacked you?�

mare // arabian // fleabitten gray // fourteen.three hh // eight // uforia

�Beware she who suckles from the Walking Mare�

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