"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."

She focused on the distant chirps. High-pitched, tender calls streaking through the sky, the volume fading as the gang of ospreys took flight from the trees overhead. Macabre's chestnut lobes flicked forward and back, listening intently for the rustle of feathers in the birds' wide wingspan, for the blows of air that flapped back with each gentle thrust into flight. She needed her mind to stop working. She needed the trees and the earth around her to stop spinning.

Slender muscles in the mare's short legs spasmed underneath her thickening pelt, threatening to fail her and bring her crumbling to the ground alongside her sick child. She couldn't bring herself to look at him, at his half-dead body sprawled out among the leaf litter, his tender sides struggling to fill as the wheezing from his parted lips grew faint. Shiraz was dying. He had been since the moment he was born. Hours had passed and he was still here, his dark eyes unresponsive, but he still blinked. Muscles lax, but his nostrils still flared as he tried to breathe. She wondered if he could feel anything anymore or if the pain had passed from him already. For a second, she wished she could trade places with him and die instead.

The humane thing would be to end her child's suffering for him. It had been hours and he still hadn't passed naturally. There was no telling when he would. She couldn't tell if her dying son could feel her presence there, or if in his mind he panicked that he was alone. She couldn't tell if her son had ever come to understand love and the strange, but strong affection Macabre had developed for him. There were too many questions, but only one answer.

The mare blinked back warm tears, the salty moisture pooling at the bottom of her eyelids and blurring her vision. She searched the trees around her for K1A1, the mare she relied on to help her through this. It was time. It was past time. She couldn't be here anymore.

Without saying a word, Macabre turned and left, faltering for just a second, half-heartedly wishing that Shiraz would see her leave and beckon her -- in any way -- to return. But the child doesn't move. He doesn't give any sign of knowing she was there at all. And with heavy strides and a heavy heart, the mare streaks off.

The pitter-patter of her small hooves against the brittle grass and leaves underneath them is all she hears. Macabre races to the shoreline -- toward the endless ocean, despite her general fear -- with nothing else on her mind except to get as far away from here as possible.