Katla had never met her father. The herd she was born to was a wandering sort, and by the time she’d been old enough to remember, there were no stallions to be found. She was the youngest of a group of five children, the others already yearlings, and the mares had doted on her like a precious ruby - perhaps to make up for the fact that she had no one her age to play with. They’d encouraged her wildness, coaxed the imagination from her soul, and every night when the sky lit with the twinkling of stars and Katla curled up into the warmth of her mother beside her, Mother would tell her stories about the world and all the beautiful places she had been.
In their band of misfit wanderers, touch had always been natural. Two bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder or nose to neck, finding much comfort and little shame in physical affection. Katla had never questioned it or even considered that touch, in the world outside of her home, might be taboo. With her head draped casually across Mikhail’s neck and her chest pressing against his shoulder, she feels as comfortable as she might have been back home embracing her mother, and not a complete stranger she’d found in the dark.
The cold, too, doesn’t cut as deep, the frosted knife of winter air dulled by the warmth of skin on skin. Katla sighs with content as the warmth radiates through her chest, humming deep in her throat. Her ears twitch to the sound of his voice, a casual question that leaves her mind turning somersaults to scramble for an answer. Did she believe in fate? A cosmic balance? Truthfully, she doesn’t know.
”I believe…” She pauses briefly, huffing warm air against his mane before continuing her thought in the voice of a wayward dreamer.
”I don’t know… I wouldn’t call it fate. I believe that everything will work out as it needs to. I believe in the universe.”
What does that mean? She doesn’t know, but like before, it sounds right enough for now.
”Are you ready to start our new adventure, then, Mikhail,” she asks brightly, suddenly. She gives his mane one last snuffle, smiling at the rebound of warm air, and takes a step back, her luminous eyes sweeping through the dark. She hadn’t decided which way to go yet, but maybe her new friend could help with that.