We need to talk, Arroyo said, and Aventuras lifted her half-white, half-black face to look openly toward him. There had not been much said since the family was displaced from the Harbor, but Aventuras had not pressed for any explanation either. Her ears flicked forward to listen, and she stood quietly aside as he explained his experience with wandering. To Aventuras, that way of life sounded appealing. She had been born in the Cove and lived in the Cove until she met Arroyo. Yet she was named for adventure, and while her priority shifted to keep her son safe once he was born, there was still a piece of her that was always driven to curiosity by the world she’d yet to see.
Atlantis was so different from Tinuvel, after all, and even though they’d been here awhile, she still felt like she was discovering new things about the island.
As the word “failed” left Arroyo’s lips, a frown made its way across Aventuras’s features. The thought that he had let them down in any way did not occur to her, any blame was placed directly across the shoulders of the usurper who charged into the territory and bullied them out of their home. With young children, she wasn’t entirely surprised Arroyo had chosen for them to slip away rather than face the challenge head-on. What would happen to them all if he were injured? They needed him healthy and with them more than they needed the Harbor.
Deirdre was the one to speak first after Arroyo finished, and Aventuras found herself nodding in agreement to what the pretty dun mare said. “I feel the same way,” she added, her eyes briefly leaving Arroyo to meet Deirdre’s, and a soft smile catching her lips before she looked back at him. “All I want is for us to be together.” They could wander the islands season to season if that’s what would make them all happy, but all Aventuras cared about was that she had Arroyo, and Deirdre and the children, though she didn’t know Deirdre and her daughter as intimately as she did Arroyo, she loved them all the same. They had become her new family when she left the rather large one she’d had in the Cove, and she was as protective over them as anyone else in her life.
Aventuras stepped forward to place a soft, reassuring touch to Arroyo’s cheek, then stepped back and smiled at him. “Your family is behind you, whatever choice you make.”
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