zaia

His voice —and his laughter— is deep. Zaia’s ears strain forward and her eyes linger on the flat, even planes of the stranger’s face. She hardly notices Xanti’s arrival, glancing back only when she hears his hoofsteps in the sand and flicking one ear his way for a brief moment. All of the red dun’s attention is on the new arrival.

He sounds exciting and the Kiger mustang can’t help but lean a little closer to him. She is confused at his statement about not being alone, however, and her eyes shift to behind the stallion as she looks past him in search of another horse. There is no one there: just the three of them perched atop a dune. “It’s pretty private here,” Zaia says as she shifts her eyes back to the stranger and jerks her chin toward the grullo. “Just me and this guy.”

Amazing, that she has lived with the grullo for almost a year and still does not know his name. Introductions never seemed important when they first met— he was and is attractive, but in a fluttery way, whereas this dark stallion who is more of a stranger to her than the Sorraia fills the pit of her belly with an unusual heat each time her eyes pass across his body. “I’m Zaia,” she said, and resists the urge to move forward and bury her nose under his mane.