Some friend he had been.

It seemed that while the fresh scents of fall had still been flowing and the air was taut with the tensions of breeding and other minor misdemeanours that the stallion had been participating in, he had not been present to comfort and protect the ghostly coloured mare. Much to his chagrin, he had not noticed her state of decay (so he liked to think of her pregnancy as... a sickness or a plague instead of a gift) until it was almost spring, when he had glimpsed her disappearing into the trees for only a moment.

He beheld her largeness due to her pregnancy, and he had become enraged. First he had surmised that Therese had a lover tucked away in the shadows of his home, and for long days and nights he had torn through the underbrush looking for this illusive shadow of a man. Someone that had taken something from him and appeared to give him nothing in return. The search had been fruitless and maddening, leaving the stallion often returning to the group with twigs in his tousled red mane and his ears bitterly pressed back against his neck. Vercingetorix had not thought that the child was a product of rape, not until he had happened to overhear conversation of unwanted children being whispered amongst the mares.

Then he understood- so he thought. Upon hearing of this, and piecing together the enormity of the wandering mare, he had suspected that he must have been right to not want her wandering around during the autumn- a pretty woman would be cause enough to attract unwanted attention from dark strangers. Then he had thought some more, all while chewing hastily on some grass with some effort to dragging his mind elsewhere, that someone might have slipped under his nose, taken Therese for everything, and then left.

That had to be it.

So by the time she is returned, moving almost eagerly and nervously at the same time directly towards the herd, Vercingetorix is almost ready to greet her- almost. As she breaches the invisible wall linked between the waists of the trees, the stallion lifts his head from grazing, finding himself position on the opposite side of the herd from her and her child, so easily seen from that small distance. As if conflicted by his own thoughts, his ears rotate backwards, flicking forwards and back several times before he starts inching forwards. Having settled on a rather discontented appearance, with his ears loosely pressed back into his mane, he weaves through the herd, hips twitching and tail lashing as he went.

By the time he is on the other side of the herd, leaving nothing but empty, heavy air between Therese, her child, and himself, the infant has taken up a stance beneath his mother, seemingly protected by her graceful legs. There, Vercingetorix stops, leaving a large gap between himself and the pair, ears once again twisting forwards and back in some sort of fit of indecision as his eyes are burning into the face of the boy, trying to see the face of it's father.

The man that he had resolved to kill not too long ago.

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