Mercury had certainly missed the early snows. Her coat was now the shade of shadow-enshrouded snow, and with the subtle dapples that bloomed in her frosty coat, she blended right into the wintry forest of the Bay.

She wondered sometimes if Caliber liked it here as much as she did. He was almost a year now, so even if he didn’t like it, it didn’t matter; he would be old enough to leave soon. Mercury rarely spoke with her son. She knew he was safe, well-fed, and had the company of the other foals to keep him occupied; that was enough for her. If he needed her, Caliber could come and find her, but she was fine being otherwise left alone.

Although, she hadn’t seen him since yesterday. Mercury trotted through the fresh snow coating the lip of a cliff overlooking the body of water around which the Bay was nicely snuggled, and decided to look for him later today. In truth, it was not only her solitary nature that kept her away from her son; despite his kind nature, he looked like Felony. He acted nothing like the filthy stallion, but he had his sire’s eyes, and he reminded her constantly of him. Mercury of course did not acknowledge this, but the truth of the matter was that Caliber was a product of rape, and somewhere in her subconscious Mercury could not stand to see a rapist in her son.

But she did love him. She did not so much hate being reminded of Felony and the Lagoon when she saw him, but rather, she hated the possibility of blaming him for Felony’s crimes, and that kept her away from him. She loved him, but until she could beat Felony into the mud for what he did, she was unwilling to take the risk of hating Caliber for what he didn’t do.

So she kept her distance. Tonight, however, she would find him and maybe play in the snow with him, as they had not done anything together for some time now, and this was his first time seeing snow. Mercury paused in her trot and looked out over the edge of her cliff, cheered up by the thought of replacing their miserable, muddy Lagoon memories with new, clean, snowy ones. She sighed contentedly and turned to resume her trot along the Bay borders when her nose was hit with the scent of stallion.

Below her, where the cliff tapered off into the beach, an unfamiliar shape was plodding through the sand. Mercury’s ears pressed back toward her mane and she began toward him, but as she neared, the pale stallion suddenly took off. Taken aback, Mercury took off as well and caught up to him just as he charged through a cloud of birds; their alarmed cries and frantic wing beats bombarded Mercury’s ears and she skidded to a halt, but the stallion seemed to be having the time of his life.

“What the heck are you doing? Why are you even here?” Mercury demanded, her voice a bit shrill but broken with astonished laughter here and there. A piece of seaweed flapped madly about in the stallion’s mane, and Mercury waited for him to answer her questions so that she could snatch it out, because its existence was bothering her.

You love me, and I froze in time
Hungry for that flesh of mine
But I can't compete with the she-wolf
who has brought me to knees
What do you see in those yellow eyes?