"If Love himself weep, shall not lovers weep,
learning from what sad cause he pours his tears?
Love hears his ladies crying their distress,
showing forth bitter sorrow through their eyes
because villainous Death has worked its cruel
destructive art upon a gentle heart,
and laid waste all that earth can find to praise
in a gracious lady, save her chastity."

Breathe.

She was constantly reminding herself to do it. Soft-skinned nostrils flare as the cool air rushes in, all sound deafened by the carbon dioxide as it funnels out. The petite mare grazed lazily on the budding, hardy shrubs in the Inlet. Spring was coming round, though the vegetation here was taking some getting used to. Macabre was not a cold-climate kind of girl, having grown up in the tropics and living briefly on the island of Atlantis. Everything about her life in the Inlet would take some getting used to.

Shiraz, her young son, stumbled awkwardly nearby. The colt lept in place, rearing back on his stilted little legs, and galloping in tight circles around her. A hint of a smirk cracked his mother's lips as she chewed, and chewed some more, on the bland food that surrounded her. Macabre was constantly worrying, an internal struggle she credited to being a first-time mother. But something seemed off about her child. He was lively, eating well and had the curious, bright spark in his eye of most his age. But at times, his movements became sluggish and unraveling, even. Something was wrong with him, she feared. Something that she could not control.

The flaxen chestnut mare did her best to rid the thought from her mind, blond strands of her unruly forelock flittering gently over her eyes in the spring breeze. Shiraz had been asking for Freya a lot lately, the palomino mare who tended to him on the night of his birth. She didn't like to think much about that night. "Soon, Shiraz. You will see her soon." Macabre had responded, standing idly, but surprisingly content, in the clearing of a small meadow.