A comfort. Yes, the stories of her people were that. The Gods were mighty, but so were the mortals who starred as the heroes in her people’s tales. El Aran had told many to her herd when the afternoons stretched long and the enemy seemed but a hill away. Such things were designed to comfort. Her people had gripped the bare bones of that solace and endured.

Taika’s energy was contagious. El Aran followed the filly with lighter steps than had carried her up the mountain and found both the movement and goal to be a pleasant distraction from her dark thoughts. Taytim’s presence at her shoulder, too, was a comfort. I could call this land home, El Aran thought as the filly flung herself down into the mossy grass and rolled about in it. These horses, herd.

It was so reminiscent of her adventures with Iskelet and Dany that the black mare experienced a moment of vertigo. She shook her slightly dished head and glanced away from the earth, looking out over the steep slope of the mountain and past it to the wide blue sky that overlay everything. El Aran smiled, turned to face her companions to share the expression. Yes.

Taika’s whisper attracted El Aran’s ears and attention. "Faeries?" She frowned and glanced at Taytim. The word was unfamiliar to her. She had, however, witnessed the phenomenon that the filly spoke of. "Those stars are our fallen," she said. "Horses who have moved from this life to the next, now racing through the sky and looking down upon those still on this world. They are a sign of luck."

The black mare’s smile was smaller this time as she recalled the one time she had seen such a star. Her eyes were not often on the sky, but she had been in the middle of a prayer when she saw the light of the dead, and the days that followed had been full of fortune: her people had won several skirmishes, and celebrated their success at repelling the Purebreds.

"This is a good place. Thank you for sharing it, Taika." Her sense of urgency had begun to climb, despite the fineness of the day and the early hour. Suddenly her task was a thing she wanted to be done with— not because she dreaded the conversation she needed to have with her son, but because she wanted to be on the Peak, with Taytim and Taika and the other mares she had yet to meet. This land felt good. And it was beautiful, in a way that was not harsh or stark.

Perhaps it was best she no longer called any desert home.

"I must go speak with my son," she said, smiling again at the pair. "But I will be back. Perhaps if you find another special place you can show me, Taika. Or we can find one together when I return." Her gaze shifted to the girl’s mother. Young, yes, but so had been the seer at the height of her responsibilities. Four years old and expected to protect adults and foals and translate the will of the gods in the middle of a race war. Looking back, she was not certain how she had succeeded— or how she herself had survived.

"Taytim, my friend. There is room for one more in this herd, is there not?"