Already the stallion knew next to nothing about the raising of children. When he himself have been a child, he did not frolic and play as ruthlessly as the other foals, instead he had lingered closer to his foster mother than her mate would have liked, avoiding the din of child's play. Before him now stands a child that will run and play as his false brothers and sisters had, with laughter on his lips and happiness shining in his eyes- he would have the childhood that the red dun had denied himself. Even when Vercingetorix had been young he had found the art of raising hell somewhat repulsive, and he had been stern and serious even at a small age.

It was no different now as he thinks as to how the behaviour of the newborn would begin to take shape once he was immersed in the company of his own half siblings. Soon laughter would echo off of every tree in the forest, and there was nothing that the stallion could, or would, do against it.

He was still somewhat perplexed as to what to do with the boy that did not belong to him, but the forest stallion knew full well that the mare before him had stronger affiliations with her own blood than Vercingetorix himself, and so today he decides to ignore the child until he becomes a nuisance. Such a task seemed easy and far from impossible for the stallion.

As Yscha speaks up, there is a sense of relief that had settled into her bones, allowing the stallion to bring his dark red ears forward to listen to what she has to say. Certainly he had been doing things to occupy himself whilst the mares went about giving birth and parading around their newborn younglings, but it was hard to say whether or not he needed to perform all these activities with such stalwart focus. “I am well.” His voice, still smooth and soft, did not betray his discomfort around the fatherless child, but with yet another small, fleeting glance towards the infant, the stallion shifts his weight before looking back to the dappled mare. “Not much happens in the forest when I'm wandering.”

Vercingetorix had thought once that he would tell someone that he had heard voices in the trees- that when the leaves rustled and the branches crackled against the wind, there were whispers that found him and chased him out into the far reaches of the forest. There he found silence in the small trees that had lost their leaves long ago and stood like skinny, naked soldiers before the wide open stretch of the plains that turned into the savanna and the prairie. Instead of confiding in the mare the soft words that he hear in the wind in the trees, he nods his head and speaks again. “I am surprised you are not with the other mares.” This was his own way of ignoring the fact that he had neglected the herd for some time now, and that he was still indeed interested in their well-being, but at the same time he needed the peace and the quiet on the days that he did not sleep well- yet it seemed as though those were most of his days.