She lay curled in the shadow of a rocky outcrop, nestled against cool stone. The sounds of the nearby waves calmed her, the shush-shush of the water endlessly lapping the sand a sort of white noise lullaby. It was late, bordering on early morning; the dark of night was at its deepest, but the horizon held a soft promise of dawn, blushing pink against the line of the sea. The world was quiet, and had been for some time - until suddenly, there was a break in the pattern, an influx of noise that broke through her consciousness. The waves moved around something, and the sounds of sand being disturbed reminded her subtly of hoofbeats. The shuffling continued for a bit, and then there was a heavy thump. Briar shifted, but did not stir, assuming it to be Solgar’s brother back at long last from the Lagoon. She couldn’t say why he was in her dream, of all others, but her subconscious was a tempestuous beast. The mare had stopped questioning it long ago.

She drifted like this, the roar of the waves filling her ears for what seemed like hours. Hues of dusky rose and coral bled into the greyish purple of the night sky, seeping up like water on a dry cloth, and the sun was near to rising when Briar heard movement. Her blue eyes opened, staring half-lidded and unfocused on the beach. Her mind was foggy, and she wasn’t sure anymore if she were truly asleep or awake.

About a second later, she heard a word. And then she knew she had to be dreaming.

Mama, it called to her. The voice was young, female... She would have sworn it belonged to Azaleya, her far-flung child of the sea, but for its sadness. Mama, again, this time pleading. A surge of cream overwhelmed her vision, and when Briar opened her eyes fully, her daughter was standing over her, tears coursing down her cheeks.

“Mama, get up,” Leya said, and Briar lifted her head slowly. She did not rise, staring at the apparition of the dunalino and willing it to disappear, but instead it came towards her and pressed its warm muzzle against her neck, nudging insistently. “Please get up. Mama, please, I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed, “I’m alone and afraid and - and I -”

Briar stood, her joints stiff with sleep and age. Leya paced impatiently in the meantime, and the moment her dam was up she bounded off down the beach. Briar eased her way forward, Leya slowing periodically and glancing over her shoulder at her dam. Her seafoam eyes were wild, and not with adventure.

She stopped some yards ahead, away from the touch of the waves. At her hooves curled a small form, pink-tinged white and striped cream against the dark sand. Briar tried to make it out from far away, but then it moved. It raised its head and bleated, and Briar stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide as saucers.

Leya’s hind legs and tail, she noticed, were stained red.

“Take him,” her daughter said suddenly, need thick in her young voice. “His sire - he’s -” She couldn’t choke out the word she wanted, and fell silent for a pause. “I have to go find him. I have to bring him back. He needs me. He needs his son.”

At “son,” Briar inhaled sharply. She finally came closer, and sure enough, a child lay below her, blinking in the half-light. His eyes were blue, a blue as bright and clear as forget-me-nots. A blue like hers.

Azaleya broke Briar’s stunned spell. “Mama, I have to go. Take care of him,” she plead, her voice cracking. “Love him as you did me. Let him want for nothing. Tell him his parents love him as long and as deep as the sea.” Her gaze drifted to the colt, now dozing gently. “He deserves the world,” she whispered. Tears splattered the sand at her hooves.

She sniffed, then glanced out at the sea, at the horizon and the promise of the rising sun. “I have to go. I will find him, Mama, and we will return. We will come back for him. Until then...” When she stepped forward, Briar mimicked her, and they embraced, the sabino’s neck wet from where Leya so fiercely pressed her face against it. “I love you,” she said, and just like that, Briar’s daughter was gone, disappearing into the waves.

The mare watched her go, then shifted her gaze to the colt. An overwhelming sadness washed over her, and her legs collapsed slowly under her, her small body sinking hopelessly to the colt’s side. She sobbed at the unfairness of it, the outright cruelty: of all the horrible dreams she’d had, this was the worst, the most vivid. How could her subconscious torture her like this? How could it give her Leya, her bright, sunny Leya, and paint her in shades of pain and desperation? How could it give her a child she had no means and no presence of mind to care for?

Maybe if she closed her eyes, it would all disappear. She could block it all out, and wake up in her spot under the rock, alone and shaken but back to normal. Leya would be off adventuring again, and she would be in the Inlet, with only the ghosts of her past for company. This present - if it wasn’t just some horrible figment of her imagination - was too painful to bear.

Briar lay her head down on the damp sand, shutting her eyes against the world. The colt’s breath was warm on her cheeks. A name drifted from her lips, bubbling up unbidden. It drew from her like the softest of sighs, washing over them like the first fragile rays of sunlight. “Larkspur,” she murmured, and fell into fitful sleep.