Common

It isn’t long before Roisin’s excitement touches the silver bay as well, spreading outward from the center she formed like ripples in a still pool. By the time the matter of their visit is settled, even the dark boy is feeling restless and eager, though there are only small clues that reveal this. The fluttering dance of his bright tail, the subtle quiver of his chocolate skin. Details easily missed by those who don’t know him well, who misunderstand the careful nuances of his expression for a lack of any emotion at all. It doesn’t help, of course, that half of his face has been permanently twisted into a glare, but Hades has never been an easy creature to read. Like his mother Rivaini, he has always guarded the secrets of his heart jealously. And since the events of that fateful night, he has learned wariness of his own kind— particularly when it comes to touch.

Yet he is perfectly at ease beside Finch, and content in the presence of their old playmate. Only the strange woman makes him uneasy in the way that she watches him closely, the way that she reacts to even the smallest movements he makes. Hades has known fear, but only as its victim and never as its source. To him, the palomino’s intense scrutiny feels hostile, such that his ears flip backwards reflexively when her gaze rakes over him again. And on its heels come words that hold the power to wound him, to carve furrows deeper than the puckers of his scars. What about him? Marking him not only as unwelcome, but as a creature too dim-witted and repulsive to even understand what she is saying.

Bristling with indignation, the line of the yearling’s lip curls upward again, and he moves silently, sullenly, to hide himself behind the wall of Finch’s body. There, he nurses his bruised ego by tucking his face against the arch of her neck and exhaling his breath into the warm red skin. And between the familiar comfort of the filly’s scent and the uncompromising defense of Roisin’s words (Hades is family too), the liver chestnut relaxes. Then emerges slowly and hesitantly from his self-made hiding place, favoring the gold-and-white mare with the wary glance of a wounded prey animal (that wariness an irony of the highest degree, given how much fear he evokes in her). After that, he is content to turn his attention to the nearer and more familiar of his companions, leaning subtly into the broader body of his age-mate so that he can feel the gentle rhythm of her heart against his shoulder.

After a moment of terse silence, Roisin turns and begins to trot north, commanding that they follow. Hades waits only as long as it takes for Finch to obey, then begins to press forward beside her, matching his slightly-longer strides to her own. If she chooses to follow, the white-splashed palomino will take up the rear, with the freedom to keep as much distance between herself and the brown colt as she chooses. And though he doesn’t look back as flat forest yields to sloping stone, the backward tip of one ear is evidence enough that the Ridge’s prince hasn’t forgotten their nameless companion.

Or forgiven her.