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Spring, it seems, has taken its time venturing towards the Northmost island this year. It drags its feet, melting the snowdrifts little by little, the sun barely lighting up the sky before ducking back behind the clouds. Even the rivers are thawing slowly: all but their southern tails are still frozen over, and Çiçek, swollen again with foal, dares not try to break the slippery ice apart with her striped hooves. Instead, she finds the lake, knowing its shallows would most likely be liquefied once more, or else thin and lacy enough for her to burrow into without risk. The dun-striped mare sips carefully, enjoying the crispness of the water, but when she lifts her head, she sees it: a little patch of green stalks, tiny white flowers hanging from them like pearls, popping up out of the slush. Snowdrops. Her heart wrenches, and she ducks back into the safety of the pines, not thirsty anymore.

The Cove is more home to her than anywhere, and it bustles with activity like it always has, but now that her children have gone, it just feels full of ghosts.

Even she has taken to the shadows lately, combing the sprawling evergreen forest for traces of Chrysanthemum. She'd seen neither hide nor hair of her sharp-tongued daughter since their argument. Chrys was the most solitary of her brood, often spending long stretches of time by herself - but she had her designated hiding places, and even if Çiçek didn't lay eyes on her, she'd leave behind some sort of marker for her, some proof that she was alive and well. After the twins' difficult birth, she would spend the cooler months with her mother, monitoring Çi throughout her pregnancy for signs of trouble. This winter was especially cold without the spotted girl by her side, and though she searched every possible place - every known trail, every old hideaway, every nook and cranny - there was nothing left of her. No scent, no hoof print or strand of tangled, multihued mane or tail hairs, no leftover herb remnants or signs of her many peculiar rituals. Nothing.

The hole in the sunkissed mare's heart grows wider with every passing day, loneliness rushing like the tide to fill it. Guilt, too, mixes in, settling like a stone, a constant weight upon her. Why did Çiçek have to yell at her, that day of the meeting, a half-year gone? She wasn't mad at Chrysanthemum - her daughter was only trying to help. She was mad at Ysabel, mad at the loss of her newborn daughter, mad at the cruel hands of fate and the winds of change that cared nothing for her feeble mortal desires. But she couldn't do anything about that. Ysabel never showed her face - still hadn't. Snowdrop was gone, her body turned to seafoam. And fate, as Çiçek knows, still did what it wished, regardless of the lives it irreparably changed in the process. Chrysanthemum was the only tangible thing she could turn her anger onto, and it had cost her the one remaining link she had to the Cove, and to Solomon, and to everything they'd spent so many years building together, piece by little, imperfect piece.

More alone than ever, Çiçek meanders through the trees, head low. The sound of the ocean grows closer as she walks, the scent of bracken and saltwater mingling with the crispness of fir and snowmelt, and when she stumbles upon the white-faced mare near the forest's edge she almost doesn't notice her, so wrapped up is she in her own roiling thoughts. She pauses, honeyed gaze drifting over her damp figure. Çi knows of Xiomara, Solomon's fierce Queen Consort, but they haven't spoken much, if at all, their large families keeping them well-occupied throughout the years. But something's different, this time. Xiomara smells of the tropics - of Atlantis. And there is an air of loneliness about her, a bone-deep melancholy that Çiçek knows all too well.

She nickers softly as she approaches, but says nothing else, quite aware by now of the futility of pretty words. She dips her head, offering a wordless greeting, and settles some yards away, bending (with some difficulty, thanks to her rounded belly) to pick at what little bits of new spring grass might linger beneath the bed of pine needles at their hooves. They might be alone, and there may be voids within the two mares that neither of them can fill for the other, but at least here - at least now - they are alone together, and that has to count for something.

the risk of loving