Çiçek dozes under the shade of the tall palms dotting the coast. The sun shines high above, pleasantly warm, and a cool breeze blows in from the ocean, ruffling the leaves high above so that light dapples over her golden skin. She’s found herself more tired lately, more hungry, more… everything, and there’s no doubt in her mind now that she is with child, even if she doesn’t show it yet. The mare has, in her private moments, taken to staring at her own speckled belly, pressing her pink muzzle against it in quiet awe at what grows within. Her first child. The possibilities file endlessly throughout her mind: will it have Solomon’s deep emerald eyes, so piercing and unforgettable, or her warm amber ones? Will she pass on her and her baba’sfather’s spotted backs, and the pearly sheen of their coats? Would it have her dam’s sweetness, her lover’s dogged determination? Some of this, she knows, is a consequence of one’s upbringing, and she intends to follow in Azaleya and Briar’s footsteps in that regard, parenting with love and devotion and a desire to leave the world better than she’d found it. But other things cannot be changed. Some things are determined in the womb, long before a mother’s influence can steer it in a certain direction. Çiçek guesses constantly what those things will be for her firstborn.

Her chest rises and falls with soft, even breaths, and as her half-conscious thoughts drift, yet again, to her uncertain future, the soft press of hooves over dry sand brings her back to the present. She lifts her head from its place upon the sand, whickering low in surprise. A slow smile drifts over her features as she pinpoints the source of it: Rivaini, out on one of her daily patrols. The guardian’s mahogany coat glows in the sunlight, the platinum locks of her mane and tail glimmering stark against the firm curves of her muscled physique. It draws Çiçek in, a moth to her flickering flame, and she gathers her legs beneath her and rises from her spot, shaking the sand off of her coat and trotting bouncily after her. A whinny rises in her throat, her head and tail held prettily aloft as her voice beckons. “Rivaini!” she calls, quickening her pace to catch up.

When Çiçek pulls up alongside her, she reaches out to grab a hunk of the mare’s mane, tugging gently to slow her pace. “Rivainiii,” she coos, her sing-song syllables as enticing as the curve of her pale neck. She pulls her face to her breast, ears perked forward, and pokes out her lower lip. With her bright, round puppy-dog eyes, the golden girl is an image of performative petulance. “You still owe me,” she says, her honeyed tones laced with playful haughtiness, “for the race. You lost, remember?” Even with everything going on, Çiçek hasn’t forgotten that she had, ultimately, won that race, in every aspect, and she intended to claim all of her prizes. She carried one, now, in her womb, and could see the other in her mind’s eye, clear as day: a certain proud creature, red and white and positively seething, bedecked in a rainbow of tropical blooms. It would be glorious. The mare locks onto that image, forgetting the twist in her gut that reminds her their time together now has limits.

Perhaps she could get Faolain to hold her down...