He had survived without a mother.

As a newborn he had been little more to his father but the only pair of innocent eyes that had witnessed the murder of the grullo woman that had brought him into the world. There had been little cause for the palomino beast to keep the boy alive, and yet he had been merciful and after dragging the boy through the swamp, sand, and sea, he had deposited the red dun child on the doorstep of the nearest terrain on the nearest island, sweet talking some innocent woman into being the boy's mother.

So he had gone from there. While Ava had been a more than suitable caregiver and Vercingetorix would have gladly gone back to save her from the wretched clutch of her mate, she was not a mother to the stallion. Coddles and kisses had run thin shortly after his arrival, and then after him came another child, one that was painted and pretty like the man that she had loved. Though the dun stallion harboured no ill-will towards the woman, having chosen her own trueborn children over him, he regretted that he too had never had a mother. Thus he had suspected that the girl before him bearing his stripes and the generously bright colouring of her mother would have no issues with surviving once she latched onto a teat that would provide her with essential nutrients for the first little bit of her life.

Already she had started to come alive, darting off to the side and into the darkness that had only just begun to die away, meaning that the sun would be bleeding from the distant horizon in a short time, and they would all be bathed in sunlight. It was then that all the mares of the forest would awaken and find themselves in the company of a child that needed someone to care for her, and a stallion that had the littlest notion of what to do with an infant.

Turning his head, the forest stallion watches quietly as the girl seems to be overtaken with the new world around her, bounding left and right, looking into small things that did not concern her. No doubt she was enthralled with the bugs and the flowers that would soon be plentiful in the forest, and the ground would be coated with yet another new world for her to immerse herself in. With a watchful eye kept on the girl and his ears still folded back as a bittersweet reminder of his own treacherous thoughts of murder from earlier, the stallion lets the girl continue with her play.

male, red dun, ee aa Dd, crossbreed, 15.1 hh.
mordred x blackwort.