“Can I know what happened?”
Orhan looked at Carisa, his face a mask and his lips a firm line. Saying “it’s complicated” would have been too cliche, so instead he said nothing. Much as he would have liked to include her in his family’s troubles, she was too new; he did not want to burden her so soon after her arrival. Besides, they still hardly knew each other, and he was not sure he was comfortable explaining to her that his mother was hugely prejudiced and that he was rethinking everything she had taught him in his childhood, or that he might have accidentally made things worse in his attempt to make them better. Or that I still have nightmares about what that Akhal-Teke stallion said that day on the dune.
No, she did not need to know any of that.
Mercifully, before the silence could stretch on too long, a distraction arrived in the chestnut form of Vesti. Orhan turned his eyes to the mare, and his expression softened. His Vesti. The one horse who had not yet been roped into all this racially-fueled tension (to his knowledge). She was uncorrupted: his last bastion for normal herd life. He could look at her and forget his troubles for a little while.
They touched noses, and he watched as she introduced herself to the much-taller Carisa. Cautiously, he cleared his throat and spoke softly: “Speak slowly; she listens with her eyes.” When Vesti returned her attention to him, he managed a tired smile. “I’ve been around, I promise. I’ve just been... distracted.” He cleared his throat again, and shifted his weight self-consciously. He motioned with his nose to the heavy-set palomino mare before them. “I found Carisa here wandering in the desert one night a few weeks ago. She will be staying with us.”
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