Common

Though she had seen four full cycles of the seasons since her birth - and traveled further in these brief years that many aspire to do in a lifetime - there was still much that Kvothe had not experienced. Like the smoldering intensity that darkened Ironclad’s gaze when he looked at her. As a creature unlike the rest of her herd, the mare had been considered ugly - though whether or not this belief was true depended on the eyes of the beholder. To an outsider, her chestnut coat was less likely to be considered abnormal, and in the sunlight it gleamed like an ember. And though she had been among the tallest in her herd - males included - Kvothe’s build was not unfeminine. In fact, compared to the human standard of her breed the soft-spoken mare was slender and fine-boned, though her sloping shoulders and hindquarters still hinted at the potential of her power.

In any case, Kvothe mistook the young stallion’s focused stare for scrutiny, and was certain that he would change his mind about the home that he’d offered her. And to make matters even more confusing, the mare had begun to feel a restless energy that chafed at her enforced stillness. It made no sense that she should want to run after such a long swim, particularly since Kvothe was not keen to part ways with the first stallion who had ever laid claim to her. Perhaps what she was feeling was simply excitement for the prospects of her future - and fear that the pendulum of the Fates would reverse itself again.

“I think so,” the mare replied dubiously to Ironclad’s question. If she’d had a brow, it would be furrowed - instead, her uncertainty was expressed in her voice, and the agitated dance of her reddish-brown tail. “Most children are named by their parents, but I was named by the herd’s matriarch, Narene. My mother - she didn’t want to, because that would acknowledge me as her daughter.” Kvothe’s doe-like gaze dropped to the tufts of sun-browned grass that stood between them at this confession, and pain twisted the corners of her lips twisted downward. She was thought of as impure; a stain on the bloodlines of her family. Refusing to grant her a name was tantamount to the filly’s dam arguing that she had not birthed her. Nameless, her daughter would not be counted among the offspring that she’d borne.

Once she died, it would be as if Kvothe had never existed at all.

Exhaling her breath in an inaudible sigh, the red Friesian restored her smile by expending every bit of strength and determination that she could muster. Once there, it was easier to remember the joy that she’d felt before her thoughts had turned to the past. After all, Ironclad had granted her the boon of choosing what he would call her - and though Kvothe briefly entertained the thought of beginning truly anew, she could not imagine being called anything but the name she’d been gifted. And if there was any sorrow associated with that name, then her pain only gave it more meaning. “She told me once that the name was an old word, that it meant ‘immortal’. And that as long as I had a name, I could not be forgotten, and would remain with the herd even after I’d left. Like her daughter.”

Morrigan. Kvothe had never known the mare who’d been banished long before her own birth, but the name had lingered in the minds of the herd even years later. Perhaps there had been truth to what Narene had told her. Perhaps, even as she surrendered to the new life that she would lead here, a memory of her would remain in the place that she had been born.

And wasn’t that all immortality was? Defying the inevitability of fate, and living beyond the years that life saw fit to grant her?