The next few moments are a blur. Çiçek’s words linger like pollen in the air around them, suffocating the light-heartedness of before; it’s all she can do not to choke on them as she grasps the shimmering golden feather and weaves it into Rivaini’s forelock, her lips brushing against her forehead. The mare’s musky-sweet scent fills her senses - and then it doesn’t, and she’s stepping away, and the voice coming out of Rivaini’s throat seems normal but for the tremor shaking it like leaves rustling in the barest wind, and before Çiçek really knows what’s going on she is announcing her departure and slipping right through her fingers and into the abyss. The dun moves a pace forward, opening her mouth to call her back - but Rivaini is already gone, and were it not for the wind tousling her mane and the smell of the ocean and the sound of Iscariot’s voice in her ears, she would have been sure the ground was falling out beneath her.

She didn’t even get a chance to tell her she’d be back.

Çiçek stares blankly after her for a moment, her mind following her through the trees. Iscariot speaks again, and she swings her head to look at him; she can tell by his tone that he’s reassuring her, but it doesn’t do much to calm the waves of emotion rolling over her in great, pounding swells. Shock, confusion, disbelief, loneliness, grief - all of it, and more, draws her out like a rip current, farther and farther from the shore and this spot where everything hurts, suddenly, so incredibly much.

Çiçek fights against it. She snorts, setting a few feathers aloft, and shakes her head, blinking rapidly against the pressure stinging behind her eyes. “It’s okay,” she says, even as her tones come dull and flat from her throat. “She - she just needs her space.” The stinging grows worse, and she tears her gaze away from Iscariot’s kind face, hiding the glassiness she knows lurks there under long, pale lashes. “There’s plenty of time. I’ll talk to her again before I leave. That’s fine.” Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones; maybe it’s the way she’s built this moment up in her own head; maybe it’s Rivaini’s reaction, or the fact that she’s leaving in and of itself, or the timing, who knows, but whatever it is Çiçek is feeling in this moment, it is most certainly not fine.

The spotted mare sniffs. She shifts her weight, bending her neck as if to scratch an itch and hiding her face in the wavy depths of her pale mane. The green feathers flash in her periphery; she still wants one for herself, but the energy is off, now, and Rivaini is gone, and it’s all Çiçek’s fault. The wheels are already turning, the foal already growing, Solomon already waiting in the Cove with a piece of her splintered heart, put there willingly by her own two hands. Things are changing. Hadn’t she wanted that?

Why, then, does it hurt so much?

Çiçek sighs, her breath rattling in her chest. “Thank you, Iscariot, for all your help,” she says, reaching towards him, now, to blow a soft breath against his pale muzzle. “The foal tires me, and I must go and rest. I won’t trouble you anymore today.” She smiles, though it doesn’t linger long, and bows her head in farewell. “It was very nice to meet you,” she murmurs, and with that the spotted mare wheels away and heads in the direction from whence she’d come.

There is a place for her, she knows, where the coast is empty and the sound of the tide rises over everything, where the sand is warm and soft like a hug and the light dapples through the leaves of the palm trees overhead. It is there - and only there - that Çiçek will free the sobs that sit, waiting, beneath her tongue.