Now, take me home.

He can’t remember anyone being so direct with him before. Fell experiences a moment of indecision; he doesn’t know how to act. Luckily, he possesses no words over which to stumble and betray himself of his uncharacteristic uncertainty. He is also no fool. Fell may be unfamiliar with taking orders from a mare (one he’s just met, anyway — he can’t deny that many of the resident Bay mares are allowed to boss him around) but he isn’t about to let it cloud his judgment. Besides, he recovers himself in the slightest of seconds and finds that he is quite agreeable to her demands. He can’t help it if she’s right; what choice does he have but to do as she says?

He decides that this little gray mare can boss him around as often as she likes.

Fell tries to be smooth in his recovery, but he hardly has time to save face — if any was lost in the first place — before she is chasing him across the Common. He is committed at this point, and leans into the dynamic, bolting forward at her direction with a spirited buck and thrash of his heavy head.

Instead of driving her ahead of him like the other mares he’s guided to the Bay in the past, Fell lets her tag along in his shadow. He crow hops flirtatiously every few strides until they hit the beach. From there he falls back, wanting her within his reach should she start to flounder in the waves.

---

Winter comes and goes. Fell is attentive to his two pregnant mares, which eventually turns into three when the towering Paradise mare is exiled to the Bay. Snapdragon tosses the amazonian woman to him with disgust, but he won’t complain about another warm body.

Corvette, he notices, does not flinch against the harsh Tinuvel winter. She’s either very resilient, very stubborn, or she is familiar with the climate. Possibly all three. She hadn’t smelled like the Bay or any of its neighbors when he had met her on the Crossing, so it isn’t immediately obvious when she might have spent time here, if she ever had at all. Without asking, Fell can’t know if she had grown up anywhere on the islands, or if she had come from somewhere across the sea.

He aches to hear of her life, to hear anyone speak to him, but prompting for such things is difficult. Most of those around him seem to believe that silence is more comfortable for him, and for a long time, that was true. Fell could only speak with actions, and in turn, actions were all that Fell chose to understand of others. He still finds comfort in easy silence; the imbalance of communication is far less obvious when a companion speaks to him in his native tongue. There is, and will probably always be, a certain discomfort in navigating verbal conversations.

However, the influence of that discomfort has been rubbing away, bit by bit. It comes off with the friction between bodies; every gentle touch takes a little bit away. It happened so slowly that Fell had never noticed, until the hunger of a particularly isolated and silent day was unapologetically satiated by a voice. He understood the cravings then.

He still can’t ask for this need, however. Most of the time, Fell is satisfied with the heavy silence of the Bay, or with the quiet conversations that ebb and flow perpetually among the herds. Sometimes, though, the cravings hit him with desperate force; the desire for a voice directed at him, something more than just a greeting. A story, an account of someone’s day, a memory. Something for which Fell would have to request or prompt. He can’t blame anyone for not inherently knowing, especially those who have been with him so long that the silence is almost as native to them as it is to him.

Luckily, the coming spring brings with it a welcome distraction. Fell tries to be smooth about his hovering, but he can’t seem to stay away from Corvette, especially as her middle swells visibly. He can feel her discomfort, and it takes effort not to throw some kind of tantrum to express his frustration with the lingering snows and bitter cold that he thinks must be making her miserable. He knows that would be useless and embarrassing, though, so he tries to channel his energy into better things, such as being moderately annoying or embarrassing on purpose to make her laugh. Corvette’s laugh helps to soothe his loneliness when the silence overwhelms him, and he doesn’t even have to ask her for it.

This morning he tracks her down through the half-frozen forest. Snow lingers in the shadows of trees, but has melted off already in the places where the sun cuts through to the forest floor. It’s going to be a warm day. When he finds her, he sends a breathy whicker rattling into the crisp dawn air. Steam billows from his nostrils, casting a halo around his shaggy head and neck as he approaches her. Fell extends his muzzle in a silent greeting, before yanking his nose back with playful abruptness and pawing the half-thawed earth between them.

stallion | marwari mutt | black | torn left ear | bay