Khar struggled with her pregnancy each day since her return to the Peaks. She was not unfamiliar with the struggles of navigating the jagged cliff face or the rocky hillocks that made up the home of the peak mares, but with the pregnancy itself. Raider's child. She knew the moment the heat disappeared from her skin that the damned lagoon stallion's seed had found purchase in her womb. Each day that her belly began to grow and the child within nudged or lately outright kicked her sides that it was his child she would soon bring to life. Each day she found herself struggling with her own nature. She was a valkyrie a mare with no master and yet here she was chained to a stallion she despised. She had watched his demise with uncontrolled glee, proudly she had kicked her own mound of sand upon his battered carcass and yet still she was not rid of the haunting memory of him.

When the first pains of labor grip her, she meets them with hard eyes, defiantly she moves to the edge of the high peak determined to rid herself once and for all of everything that remained of the bachelor stallion's bloodline.

She had been sure of her decision, sure through the pains of labor that she would merely shove the wobbling child off the nearest cliff side... until the moment she rises to gaze down at the small foal.

Perhaps if it had been a boy, the decision would have been easier, her distrust for stallions strengthened by the force that Raider had taken from her. Gazing down at the helpless chestnut filly she could not deny the sudden surge of motherhood that washes over her.

Small dark eyes blink up at her, ashen lips opening and closing again and again. Tiny nostrils quiver at the scent of milk that dripped from her swollen teats. Defiantly Khar shakes her head, nimble legs shifting beneath her as she rises to pace back and forth in the struggle. How easy it would be for the filly to take a misstep now, to tumble down the cragged mountainside. Easy it would be to explain the child's broken body away as a poorly fated accident and yet she cannot.

Desperately the filly bleats for her, struggling desperately amid the tangle of afterbirth to follow her mother's shadow. A breath catches in Khar's lungs as one of the foal's hooves scrape along the edge of the peak and she rushes to the young foal's side, bumping the wobbling filly further from the edge at to the safety of the rockface. Tears cling to her eyes, forming small wet paths down her cheeks. "I cant..." she murmurs, burying her muzzle into the warm damp crimson skin.

For moments they stand like this, mother pressed against daughter. The small foal blinks up at the warmth of the familiar shadow but its understanding is far gone. Finally Khar sighs heavily and uses her muzzle to guide the filly to her flank. It does not take the wobbling foal long to discover the source of the sweet smelling scent that causes her small stomach to gurgle in hunger. Desperately the filly latches onto Khar's teats and suckles hungerily her fill. "Mononoke.." Khar whispers, lapping affectionately at the filly's rump, cleansing her damp flesh in an attempt to warm the shaking filly. It is in this moment that Khar decides.. there will be no sire, no mention of her birth. She will be a daughter of the peak and the history behind her conception will remain forgotten even to the winds themselves. She would not allow her hatred of Raider or the memories haunt her anymore. Mononoke was her daughter and her daughter alone.

4yrs | mare | Egyptian Arabian | dapple rose gray | 14.2hh | bound to no one | valkyrie of the peak