As she walked to her tree, a huge pine with limbs that arched into curtains like a willow around its base, she thought about the occupied territories on the island. She hadn’t bothered with them; they had been here when she arrived, so she felt she didn’t have any right to try and run them off her island. They hadn’t bothered with her, either. However, though they both contained the scents of mares, the borders primarily held that of a stallion. Could it be that here, on this strange island, it was the male gender that held the sole right to land?

Mercedes snorted as she slid through a break in the heavy needles that pulled their branches toward the ground. They tickled her sides and she had to duck her head a bit in this shelter, but it was shelter nonetheless, and the wind that had become stronger outside only gently brushed her mane and tail as she thought.

That explanation was all very well, even made some sense as to why this stallion was just as arrogant as Mercy herself was. But she had been here first, hadn’t she? Were mares so domesticated as to be mere property here? Could her presence and assumed ownership of this territory be likened to that of an inanimate object?

The thought made her think, and though it really did make sense and really did begin to bother her, she realized the stallion that probably truly owned this territory was being incredibly reasonable with her. She was an intruder, something left behind from a past owner, shoving her face in his and trying to convince him it was the other way around.

She had been here first, and that would remain her reasoning for as long as she could hold onto it.

He spoke, and Mercedes’ ears snatched at the sound and held on. This time, she understood the words that reached her through the low-hanging branches of her tree. “What, have you got something better?” she snapped, sounding harsher than she had meant to. Having spent all her life alone, she was both used to solitude and sick of it. She wanted him to leave her alone, but not that much alone, because she wanted his company simply because it was company at all.

The mare peeked her head through the branches to look at him. She had decided not to speak anymore as long as she could help it; she didn’t want to spoil his wonderful voice with the rarely-used collection of rusty sounds she called her own. Mercedes stepped farther out of her hiding place, reaching her nose out to catch the scent she hadn’t really had time to memorize before.
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