Çiçek glows under the red mare’s praise. For her, being a good mother is of the utmost importance; she knows her own dam has her faults, as everyone does, but the relationship she has with Azaleya is irreplaceable, as deep and wide as the sea. Briar, too, had been an excellent mother, known for taking in orphan foals alongside her four naturally birthed children, and then her childrens’ children. The spotted girl knows well the influence of a parent, how they could nudge you in a certain direction while blocking out others, and it was a sort of power she didn’t take lightly. Had she been treated differently, her life would be unrecognizable.

Her smile fades, though, when reminded of the bargain she’d struck, and the choices she’d made with her half-twisted heart. She, too, falls quiet, her eyes dipping down to the ground in thought. After a moment, the golden mare finds her voice, the high syllables tentative on her pale lips.

“What if my heart doesn’t want to choose?”

Çiçek meets Sio’s gaze again, her words stronger, washed blue with sorrow. “Tinuvel was a place of great hardship for my family,” she says, “and many painful memories.” Briar’s life, its brief highs and enduring lows, was spent mostly on Tinuvel. Even her own brother had been raised upon its icy shores, the advent of his arrival a traumatic event in and of itself. Çiçek was foolish enough to ask about it only once; the grief reflected in her dam’s face as she told her the story of her Larkspur’s birth was all she needed to know the truth of the situation, and she dared not bring it up again.

She sighs, her ears flicking back briefly in frustration. “I need to see the land of my ancestors,” she says. “I *want* to.” After a long pause, she speaks again, her voice sheepishly low.

“I just hope I don’t meet the same fate.”

Solomon seems different, in a way. He has found her, time and time again, and the feelings she has for him are real and undeniable and so intense, they terrify her. She only hopes that, once she settles in the familiar landscape of the Cove, her presence in his heart won’t blend into everything and be lost.

Even then, though - even if their relationship grows, what of Fae? What of Rivaini? She can’t leave them forever, but she can’t be in two places at once. Çiçek didn’t expect the two Guardians to nestle themselves so firmly into her life, but they did, and because of it, there was no painless way to go about leaving the Ridge. Not if her child was going to grow up knowing the love of both of its parents, and not if she was going to follow the path her heart still wanted so badly to explore, even as it looked back for familiar faces.

Çiçek champs her teeth, uncomfortable with lingering in such a fraught emotional space. She glances up at Siobhan, then, and notices the mare’s own reticence, her face just as gloomy and contemplative, if not moreso. She tilts her head, her own problems mercifully falling away to make room for the curiosity budding once more within her narrow chest. She doesn’t want to pry, wants to give her new friend the space she needs and not poke at any sore subjects, but something is clearly bothering the small red girl, even as she tries to deflect it. “Arkadaşım,””My friend,” she murmurs, her voice gentle again. “Is something troubling you, too?”