Common

until the lion learns how to write

Because we're a family, he says, and she cannot stop the narrowing of her eyes as she searches for the falsehood. Family had always been important to the little gray, despite her rough beginning in the world. She was a product of her blood mother's betrayal, the whelp of an unknown stallion that Lakota had never met. Ironclad should have been her blood father too, but Cherokee had betrayed him. And yet her true father had adopted her despite that, had raised her as his own, even when Cherokee had decided to run rather than to face the consequences of her disloyalty. Vita Nova had nursed her when no one else could, and had cemented Lakota's lifelong bond to her true family.

But even that family had eventually abandoned her. Her secondary mother - Kvothe - had left them, and then the remainders of Ironclad's little herd had travelled together for a time, but that had eventually fallen apart. Ironclad had returned alone, and the little pony mare had wasted away without him. Even Avarey had eventually separated from Lakota, leaving the young gray mare alone yet again.

Family was everything, but it was also nothing too. It didn't hold a herd together any better than an empty promise would. Commitment required strength; not just of body - the sort enforced by bared teeth and striking hooves - but also of mind. The strength to stay, even when the world was against you. The strength to face the universe, no matter what. As much as Lakota did not want to become Arael, she had admired the little pony's commitment to her father. Ironclad could have led them into the molten center of a volcano and she would not have batted an eye.

The painted stallion spoke again, and Lakota stored away her musings for later. It was almost validating to hear him speak of Ironclad, and of his own connection to Tinuvel, and she almost considered asking him if he was related to the painted stallion of the Cove but did not. In truth, she hadn't much cared for Solomon. As much as he had opened his home to them when they had need, he was just as insistent that they leave when it was time. An ally of circumstance, rather than true dedication.

Bacardi's question earns a small, thoughtful frown from the gray mare, and she looks away briefly. The pinto was so far ruining her expectations of what the Crossing was going to be like, and she hadn't prepared herself for the twenty questions to be insightful twenty questions. Stallions here were only supposed to know the things about her that she offered, not of her heart before she'd even had a chance to speak of it herself.

"Yes," she admitted softly, her ears tucking apprehensively back. "I do miss Tinuvel. A part of me will always belong to the Inlet," she murmured before finally bringing her gaze back to Bacardi. "But..." she trailed off, struggling to convey what made the Inlet beneath anyone else's rule unappealing. To live there, where her family had once ruled, without her family, was almost like becoming a traitor herself. Sleeping with the enemy, so to speak, despite the fact that she knew little of the mare that ruled there apart from her relation to Solomon. "It is not the land itself that I miss most," she finally offered. "If that makes any sense."

The vulnerability she'd offered made her feel weak and she straightened herself up with an intake of breath, before forcing a brightness into her voice that warded away the melancholy of moments before. "But I would be happy to see the Forest with you, Bacardi, and see if it is all that you have claimed that it is." A smile, softer around the edges, despite how little it touched her eyes. "It would be nice to belong somewhere again."

young mare // Mutt // gray // 15 hh