quinn.
He thinks about the ghost of his daughter, sometimes, left on Tinuvel in the snow like so much discarded trash. He had tucked her away within the Bay borders, at the mercy of Nyimara’s mute oaf of a brother. She had certainly been found by now, and was certainly dead.
He holds little guilt for his decision to put the girl down. Nyimara had been… decidedly
not as pleased with Quinn’s gift of a mare as he had hoped, and although he felt no fatherly obligation toward the result of this particular affair, he valued his ability to sleep without the weight of his offspring’s suffering on his shoulders. The black Bay stallion is dense, but he is reliably violent, and Quinn is comforted by the certainty that this end is a kinder one than whatever Nyimara would have orchestrated for the child.
Quinn moves languidly over the dusty Desert ground, glad to be back on Salem. The territory still reeks of Solomon and the few who had followed him out of the Cove, but the scent is fading steadily. He follows the border of the Hills, toward the blue line of the ocean on the horizon, his head slung low and dark tail swishing lazily against his heels. The arid soil and prickly Salem vegetation eventually drop off toward the beach in a clean swipe, and Quinn pauses at the edge of this small cliff with his ears twisted contentedly back. A few pebbles, dislodged by his hooves, tumble down toward the sand. A breeze lifts the sun-bleached ends of his mane.
Kipling.
Quinn’s head snaps up. His eyes focus, but Kipling isn’t
there, and his icy blue gaze switches intently back and forth over the calm waves. Nothing. He twists, casting about toward the Hills to one side and then the Desert to the other. Still nothing.
Where was she? The perfume is fresh and steady, lifted to his nose every few seconds by the breeze as it picks up and then eases off. Quinn whickers softly in confusion, then louder, as though there were a place out here where she could actually hide from him, but then he realizes — the beach.
The espresso-colored stallion turns and trots along the edge of the drop off. A few strides away, the ground slopes more gently down toward the beach, and Quinn clambers from the hard-packed earth above to the soft sand below. He turns to face the steep ledge of compacted soil, and there is Kipling, tucked beneath it, looking exhausted.
Fuck, he thinks, the gravity of the situation settling on him now that he’s confirmed Kipling’s presence.
“Kip, what are you doing here?” he breathes, striding forward with purpose, his feline demeanor transforming suddenly from sun-soaked and lazy to active hunter. His strides swallow the length of beach between them, and in a short second he is standing in front of the spotted mare. His face is a careful mask of curious indifference, but his tone betrays his concern. He casts a glance over his shoulder at the empty shore before lowering his dark muzzle toward Kipling and searching her scent for any trace of Nyimara. Finding none, he stifles a sigh of relief.
“It’s not safe for you here,” he says sternly.
stallion. spanish mustang mutt. 15.3hh. smoky black overo.
