As much as Çiçek loves the noise of their shared home, this silence with Faolain feels easy, comfortable. The longer the seconds stretch on between them, the more she can avoid laying herself, bare and vulnerable, at the other’s narrow hooves. Fae speaks soon enough, and the creamy mare’s serene face breaks into a gentle smile. “In my sire’s native tongue, it means ‘little shadow,’” she explains. “His name, Şahin, means ‘hawk.’ When they first met, he called my mother his kuş, or ‘bird,’ for the way she flew across the beaches here on this very Island.” Her heart warms to think of them, two gilded wanderers meeting by chance in paradise and knowing from then on that their paths were changed forever. Was that what she’d felt that day, so long ago it feels, back in the Meadow? Was it what she felt with Solomon, later, in their little private cove? If only Azaleya was here. She’d have an answer, one delivered with utmost confidence and a relevant anecdote from her past. Çiçek thought she had gotten all the wisdom she’d ever need from her, but more and more lately, she found herself craving the comfort of her mother’s tender insight.

When Faolain meets her gaze and holds it, her smile softens. The ‘Teke is the first to break eye contact, and relief surges through her, though uncertainty follows close behind. She chuckles a bit, just under her breath, as her guardian tries to pull the unspoken thing lurking between them out and into the light, and she shifts her weight against her, ears flicking to the side and back again. She’s gone over this moment so many times, practiced her words endlessly, but all the pretty sentences she’d saved melt away, drowned out by the hammering of her heart in her chest. As per usual, Çiçek finds herself defaulting to simplicity. Her words come blurting out of her, tumbling quickly from between her lips, even as her tone stays calm - perhaps, even, joyful?

“My little shadow,” she says, saying Faolain’s pet name in the common tongue this time, “I’m - I’m pregnant.”

Her gaze snaps to the ‘Teke’s slim face, trying to read her response. “I think you and I both know who the father is,” she adds, as if it could possibly be anyone else than the silver-tongued Northern King. Ailill was spoken for, Iscariot was too intimidated even to look her in the eye for more than a few seconds, and for all that Faolain and Rivaini caressed and fussed over her, they lacked the proper equipment for child making. As much as she wandered, and as open as her heart could sometimes be, Solomon was the only stallion she’d coupled with the past season. There was no question that the life growing within her womb, stirring more and more by the day, was due, in part, to his actions as much as her own.

Çiçek lets the implication of that hang for a moment, waiting to see the mare’s reaction to the first bit of her news before revealing the rest. Her ears perk forward, eyes bright with the timid whispers of hope. This was never going to be easy - splitting your time and affection between literal islands never could be, and neither was announcing it to an unsuspecting party - but there’s a chance, however slim, that it might go better than she expects, and she clings to that with everything she has, even as she waits on tenterhooks.