What did he owe the girl except to be blunt and honest, as much as she must had disliked it. To be abandonned must have hurt, so he thought, and yet being left behind was not always the worst thing to happen in the world. Sometimes people died, and sometimes there were babes born that never had the chance to live, lying in messes of blood and their mother’s fluids at their feet… and sometimes people never had the opportunity to meet those that would leave a print on their lives, and perhaps that was the saddest of them all. With a childhood that had been full of anger and mistrust, his mind was constantly filled with nightmares and terrifying thoughts, things that plagued him violently while he slept. The red stallion was a man that did not sleep when darkness fell across the land.

As the sun comes crashing down upon them, the mare has eyes for the heavens, standing in silence despite Vercingetorix’s discomforting words. She’s watching as the last of the oranges are torn from the sky and they are left in a haze of purple for barely a moment before the land is plunged into a darkness that is not yet illuminated by the glow of the moon. Still at ease under this blackness, the stallion’s eyes adjust under the black, and he turns his face about to look at the mare, gazing upon her for a few moments before blinking in the dark. Vivianna appears to be in a sort of unease thanks to the night, and while the red dun stands still and stoic before her, he decides that it must be best to linger about the edges of the meat of the herd due to the possible presence of predators.

Fully aware that the mares would gather together come nightfall, the stallion would assume his watchful perch at the edge of their gathering, where he would be within reach of they needed him- but the stale air did not whisper stories of predators within the area. “We’ll stay near the others tonight.” He says loosely, words hiding in what he said meaning that he expected the painted mare to stay with the other women whilst he went about his nightly duties. There were trees that groaned in the wind, lending voices to the unseen monsters, and the creatures that hovered in the branches, giving the woods an eerie feeling that sets the stallion’s teeth on edge. The forest is not nearly populated enough for him to find comfort in the middle of the night amongst the ghosts and the monsters that may lurk. Moving towards the direction that he had last seen the herd grazing, he peeks over his shoulder to offer one word of direction to the mare. “Come.”