Falls

Fell is no stranger to the habits of pregnant mares when their time of carrying a foal draws to a close. He doesn’t fret when one of them slips away for a few hours, and most times he will leave them alone initially, only following after to check on them a bit later. He doesn’t want to intrude on the most vulnerable moments; he is not a very soft stallion, and few of the mares who live in the Bay do so out of love for him.

He thinks no differently when Pacific Rim parts from the herd and isolates herself. Fell goes about his next few hours with thoughts of the blue roan mare at the front of his mind, but no concern for her outside of the standard anxiety that accompanies a birth. When he does finally slip after her, and finds that her trail ends abruptly at the beach, his stomach drops immediately.

Fell leaves Khoshekh in charge and plunges without hesitation into the frigid water. The last he was aware, Pacific Rim had been terrified, even hateful toward the ocean. On top of that, he had thought she might even be happy here. What had driven her out? What had driven her into the sea and away from him?

Fell emerges on the Crossing shore, breathing heavily. The air is heavy with recent rain, and Rim’s scent is almost completely washed away already. He presses forward anyway, ruling out the Commons immediately and heading toward the Meadow. With his head low and ears pressed forward, Fell trots purposefully through the Meadow, hoping to catch any glimpse or whisper of a scent of Pacific Rim. Instead of the pregnant mare, however, Fell catches the alarmingly fresh scent of a Lagoon stallion.

Fury rises within him, and he presses on toward the Falls where an enormous roaring of water is currently drowning out any other sound. Anger and panic intensify even further when he sees the flood; not only is Rim in danger of other stallions, but also apparently the wrath of the elements.

He makes his way quickly toward the swelling floodwater, and as the grassy earth beneath his hooves begins to grow soggy and clingy, he spots them. Pacific Rim is clinging to a rapidly sinking spit of land. To one side of her is a newborn foal, and to the other is a hulking giant of a stallion.

Fell kicks up clods of mud and grass in his charge forward, but as he plunges into the floodwater to separate his mare and foal from the strange stallion, he is cut off by a log as it flies dangerously fast downstream. Fell dodges it, barely, but it causes him to pause and calculate before rashly diving in a second time. In this moment of consideration, he realizes that the huge stallion is helping Rim and the foal get out of the worst of the flood. Fell does not love it – he still, in fact, itches to rush forward and pick a fight, floodwater and debris be damned – but he can’t deny that Rim and their child might have been screwed otherwise. Maybe Fell would have made it to them in time, but… maybe not.

Still, he is not content to linger at the edge of the swollen stream, and as soon as the debris clears, he plunges in again. Ignoring the other stallion, Fell ducks his head down, submerging his own face for a moment in order to sweep the foal out of the depths of the water and support her as they make their way to solid ground.