Voices.
The stallion abandoned the tuft of desert grass he had been idly nibbling at, lifting his head and pricking his black-tipped ears to listen, while one forgotten stalk of green still poked from his lips. Though the hills that surrounded the oasis - which he stood a mere stone's throw away from - blocked his view of the source, he could tell at least that the sound had come from the southwest: where the ocean and his borders met strange territory.
He could not make out the words, but the fact that there were two voices was enough to set him on edge. It would only be a matter of time before these strangers stumbled across his secluded herd, and he had to intercept them before that happened. Giving the swollen oasis - which had been replenished recently with the winter rains - and his growing herd one last glance, Orhan dipped his head and slid into a swift trot, the lone stalk of grass tumbling abandoned from his lips.
The hills that surrounded his oasis were some of the tallest in his territory, making them an ideal vantage point, and so as soon as the buckskin stallion had crested the dune he paused in his stride to lift his chin and gaze out at the rolling landscape of gold before him. Not far away were two eloquent figures, one a golden bay and one black as night. His heart thumped hard at the sight of the black one, imagining for a moment that it was his mother, but after squinting his eyes to give them a closer look, he realized it was not the dark one, but the lighter one that he knew.
A memory played in his head of him turning tail and running away from that very horse. He could not run now, however. He was a grown stallion, and this was his home. He had a herd and children to protect, even if it meant shedding his own blood in the process.
Even still, Orhan's old anxieties made his tongue feel thick in his mouth as he lifted his tail and descended the dune to approach the two Akhal-Tekes. He stopped a good distance away, more than aware that there were two of them and only one of him, and flicked his golden-brown gaze between them. His expression was solemn as ever, a stern mask to hide his inner turmoil, and his body was stiff and fidgety, ready to leap away if need be.
To the stallion, he said, "If you are looking for my mother, she is not here. You should go back to where you came from."
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