"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."

A gentle breeze drifted through the inlet, the ancient oaks and various pines bending and aching in the cool gust, their full branches quivering as it passed. The highlighted strands of Macabre's mane danced about her topline in the wind. She stood idly in the open pasture, enjoying the cool wind and the terrain around her. She was content, perhaps for the first time she could remember since God know's when. She felt safe -- a feeling she feared was fleeting, but tried to keep her general worrisome nature from rising to the surface. This was a good thing. Dogun was a good thing. He was providing for her, and for her son, a phrase that still seemed so foreign to her. Macabre tried to remind herself to enjoy this -- this feeling of well, nothing, for however long it would last.

Macabre's stare falls upon that of an unfamiliar, stout mare as she appears from behind the thicket. She is not overly alarmed by the stranger's presence, and assumes she is just another resident here. Macabre had yet to meet anyone in the Inlet really, having kept to herself after their dramatic arrival several weeks prior. Her attention was solely reserved for her son these days, and his faltering health. Macabre watches as the heavy-set mare's stare wanders over her son. The petite chestnut mare urges her frame forward, tucking Shiraz out of view from behind her little frame. "Hello there." She says, the mare's soft-skinned nostrils flaring as she snorted, one chocolate-coated ear lobe flicking forward and then back, then resting against her poll. The young colt weezed from behind his mother, a high-pitched hissing sound escaping from his agape mouth. The sooty-colored babe's slender sides rising and falling with each deep gasp. Meanwhile, Macabre's dark marbles for eyes stared at the mare with little interest.

"I don't believe we've met," she began, talking over her son's gasps as best as she could, a wispy tail flicking gently against her hocks. "I am Macabre."

She wouldn't bother introducing her child.