and I am more than these bones
I feel love, I feel alone

How had she met Valentine?

Dock remembered the moment as though it were yesterday rather than just two years prior. It was before things had crashed around her, she’d been sleeping in a hidden grove near the Falls when Valentine crossed her path. She’d left the Forest in a fury which, considering all that had happened and all she’d lost up until this point, now seemed silly. If she’d have never bolted from the Forest for Crossing she would have never been confronted by the nearly all-white stallion with his few blemishes of red… if she’d never bolted from the Forest she might have never met Valentine for the first time.

Dock smiled briefly, almost sheepishly, embarrassed at the silence had ensued after Onawa’ had asked what should have been a very simple question. “I…” how much of her story did she want to tell? She could say she met him in the Falls on a random excursion and give no other detail toward it. But… Onawa’ was not a mare that Dock would never again see and she’d promised herself she was going to try to integrate with the herd more… now that she had a daughter with Valentine. Now that she knew that she loved him.

“I came to the islands with my sisters,” her voice was quiet and she pulled her eyes from Onawa’, looking instead across the peaceful scope of the Prairie but seeing the past instead. “I didn’t want to leave home, but we’d been together forever, born just days apart. They picked where we’d live and everything happened so fast, I was angry and stormed away from the home we’d settled into, made for Crossing Isle…” She paused and a small smile played softly at the edges of her lips. “That’s where I met Valentine. I thought he was the strangest stallion I’d ever met.” The smile grew, remembering.

She drew a small breath. There was much, much more to that story. She blinked as though drawing away from seeing those memories and looked instead to Onawa’. “And… you? How did you meet Valentine?”

dock
four year old 15.0hh cremello arabian crossbred mare
of the prairie, mother of nephilim and oswin