Colts. There were no colts in the Bay, though father often spoke of a young stallion merely a year their senior who’d grown up among the pines and snow as they were. They had no brothers; Samhain was the first colt to cross the girl’s paths. Even nearing their year mark, neither girl was concerned about future herds or potential stallions. They had one another. They had father. What more did they need? The Bay was all they knew and it gave them everything they could desire. If they were not so close maybe they would have pined for a brother, maybe for another sister, but from day one it had been Mariael and Maziel, never parted.

It was Maziel who flicked her ear, turning her head toward Samhain’s voice, focusing on what he said over the soft melody of Tinuvel’s ocean. Here, in the Bay, the wind was not so bad. The waters churned, pulled, and smashed against the rock outerlings, but it wasn’t nearly as terrible as it was out on the open ocean or where the wind could easily reach. It was easy then, for Maziel to listen to Samhain, given that none of the three needed to shout over a hearty gale.

She considered his words and Mariael did too, but with more of a hard edge in her gaze. It was worry. Fear. She did not want to lose Maziel and father often said the sea could, at times, be difficult for him to swim. Worse yet, even more selfishly, Mariael feared Maziel would fall in love with a place that was not their home and want to leave. They were happy here among the frost… why risk it? But Maziel was a dreamer and Mariael did not want to upset her, so she stayed quiet, though her half-grown tail flicked with a decisive snap against her rump.

Maziel did not miss it.

“Where would you think to go?” She asked Samhain instead, allowing Mariael the right to pout on her own, knowing they’d discuss this conversation in great detail later when it was only the pair of them. “My father says there’s no island like Tinuvel, but Crossing Isle is the best to meet anyone from new islanders to those who live elsewhere.”

Maziel had drifted closer to Samhain, her little hooves crunching slightly against the smooth, dark pebble beach. Mariael had stayed relatively close to Maziel’s other side as though they were two opposites of a magnet and it were against the laws of nature that they stay too far apart.