“Salem?” she asks, surprised. Mercury’s dark nostrils flutter as she reaches to touch her nose to his neck, drinking in the arid, dusty scent that lingers faintly through the mask of seawater. She detects the perfumes of other mares there as well, which is surprising. Her first assumption had not been that a mare had taken him; she supposed another stallion had done it for some political purpose. The Lagoon was a strange place, and Mercury’s mind had jumped right away to the coming election, and Vadim’s involvement in Lagoon hierarchy. She hadn’t even considered a non-political motive for his absence.

She pulls back, looking up at him with narrowed eyes. “Why?” she asks. She doesn’t care about other mares — Mercury is more than content with no greater than one fifth of a stallion’s attention at any given time. She just can’t fathom what might have drawn him away from the Lagoon, willingly or otherwise, if it didn’t have anything to do with the Lagoon itself. Her heart wraps protectively around the thought of Snapdragon, and she pictures the painted girl the way she was that evening on the beach, with tears rolling down her sweet face.

Mercury takes a step back, but not to get away from Vadim, just to peer up at his face. Her amber gaze flicks between his eyes. It occurs to the silvery pale mare that he’s being careful and quiet because he’s not supposed to be here. He’s broken some kind of rule to come back to the Lagoon to see her and their daughter. This is reassuring, and the distrust in her expression relaxes slightly. “Well,” she says. “We’re alright. We’ve been left alone, luckily, but it’s barely the beginning of Fall.” She fidgets nervously, thinking about the season, the changes to the Lagoon stallions around her and the unwilling changes in her own body that draw unwelcome eyes. She’s quicker to anger, more ready to fight than usual, and she doesn’t like it. Fighting is fine, but fighting like this, feeling like you need to just to be left alone, is hellish.

“When can you come home?” she asks, closing the distance between them again. She ducks under his chin, pressing against his chest like a cat, her tail flicking to snap the ends lightly against his shoulder. She’s comforted by his presence, though she might not have admitted it before his disappearance. Even now, Mercury wouldn’t say as much out loud, but her touch is unmistakably affectionate and even a little bit longing.