Çiçek bears witness to her King's return from the shadows of the trees. She watches, keeping silent vigil from on high, as the members of his herd gather around him, offering comfort and reassurance, and she knows she should go and join them, should bask in the warmth of the moment. She should feel happy this ordeal with Rougaru's wretched daughter is over. She should feel hopeful for the future. She should feel the love she knows is there for her mate, the father of her children, the reason why she'd stayed in one place for nearly a decade.

She should feel something. Anything.

Instead, she feels nothing at all.

No - that's not right. Seeing the sea-damp masses trickle in after him, tired from two hard seasons in Salem and a trip across the Islands their King had begged them not to make, Çiçek feels the stirrings of something bitter, warming the pit of her stomach against the howling Tinuvel winds. When she'd come to these Islands, she'd been a traveler - a wild young thing, guided by the shift of the breeze and the turning of the tides. She spent her time how she wanted, going wherever she pleased with whoever she felt like, beholden only to herself.

And then she'd met him - and he was handsome, and charming, and though he'd wanted so badly to take her back to the Cove and keep her there forever, he'd let her stay with her little shadow and her sweet pea until she was ready. She had been so free - and after what happened with Rougaru, she'd thrown that freedom away in exchange for safety, for security, for comfort. She made the exchange with pleasure, plunging headfirst into life as a herd mare. She made friends with her herdmates, took turns babysitting the gaggle of foals that filled the Cove every Spring, and popped out child after child after child, throwing down so many roots she didn't know where the tendrils of her life ended and the evergreen forest began. She stayed, and she flourished.

And then, somewhere along that line - perhaps after the loss of her infant daughter, perhaps after one too many of her children left her side for their own adventures - she'd gone from thriving to just... surviving.

But still, she stayed. She watched as mare after mare left and returned to the Cove, chased hither and yon by her painted King, and she stayed. She watched as his Queens ran havoc on the Islands without his input or approval, bringing danger back home with them, and she stayed. She watched as Rougaru took his fateful, fatal stand, watched as his departure from this world took a piece of her beloved's soul along with it, watched as the once-mighty King Solomon of Tinuvel became a shell of what he was, tortured by nightmares and self-doubt, and she stayed. She watched as he disappeared from her life entirely - and she stayed.

Throughout all of it, Çiçek had stayed, wearing her loyalty like a badge of honor. She did everything he asked without question, heeded his requests, kept herself within the boundaries of his territory whilst pregnant and nursing and took care of her family even as he abandoned them. When Nyimara took the Cove, she ushered her children out of harm's way, and when he sent word from the Desert to stay on Tinuvel and not bear the difficulties a transition between such differing climates could incur, she listened, spending two seasons in the Arch, all the while trying desperately to hold together whatever fragments of his herd remained.

She had been so good - so obedient. She'd done everything right. And what did she have to show for it?

No acknowledgement, no title, no family. Nothing but cold air, aching joints, and a sour taste in her mouth.

Çiçek turns without a word, no more than a flash of gold against the emerald of the trees, and heads right for the sea.

-

The frigid waters around Tinuvel help to numb the emotions tumbling around inside her as she swims, the choppiness forcing her to focus on movements she hasn't had to make in years. It's only when the ocean grows still and warm, the deep navy shifting to a vivid turquoise, that she even has a chance to think about the enormity of what she's done. By that point, though, she's exhausted, and when her striped hooves finally make purchase on the fine, pale sands of Atlantis, aglow in silvery-blue moonlight, it's all she can do to drag herself ashore, crumple under the shade of the nearest palm, and sleep. She awakens with a start some hours later, forgetting for a moment where she is. She'd forgotten how loud the tropics were, how intense the colors were. Çiçek flares her shell-pink nostrils, inhaling the scents of pink verbena, mangoes, and ferns.

There - barely a whisper, gone if she isn't looking for it. There is the soul she has come so far to find.

Rising with a groan on four sore legs, the mare moves slowly further into the depths of the Ridge, looking for the little shadow who had once brought her so much joy in a life lived long ago.

the risk of loving