It had been a sleepless night for Orhan. The sun had fallen against a red sky, just as Maslakhat had foretold all those months ago.

If what the Akhal-Teke said was true, Orhan's mother was alone on the crossing, waiting for him. After hours of fitful attempts to sleep, Orhan had finally slipped into equally fitful dreams of El Aran standing forlorn on the crossing beach, gazing plaintively into the sunset for a horse that would never come. In his dreams, he called her name across the ocean, but she could not hear him.

She would never hear his voice again.

At some point during the night he stirred and opened his eyes to a quiet moonlit oasis. Immediately his gaze was drawn to the pale, ethereal form of Nasmat, her back to him as she strolled off into the night. This piqued his interest for a few moments, but after figuring that she simply must have been having a sleepless night too and decided to go for a stroll, the stallion shut his eyes again.

A scream woke him, though when he started awake and glanced all around him, heart pounding, he could see nothing. His desert was still. Had he imagined it?

He knew he could not sleep again after that. Restlessness invaded him, and so he let his limbs carry him in the direction Nasmat had gone not so long ago. The gentle desert breeze had covered any trace of her tracks, however, and he wandered for some time before spotting her pale form in the distance. Streaks of pink were on the horizon by then, though the crescent moon still hung low and bright, illuminating the pale mare's back and giving her an eerie glow.

With a sharp intake of breath, he realized she was not alone.

After hesitating in his stride, Orhan increased his pace to a jog. As he came closer, he saw that there were three horses in total including Nasmat: one a sandy brown, one black as night. Both bore the sleek, straight lines of Akhal-Teke bloodlines. Valve and Maslakhat. His heart hardened with distrust.

As he came upon the group, he realized he was wrong. There was a fourth horse, dark like Valve, who lay unmoving in the sand. Orhan eyed the figure warily as he pulled up beside Nasmat, not recognizing it for several moments. The air smelled wrong. Whoever this horse was, they were very sick, or already dead.

A slow horror dawned on him as his eyes took in the horse's features: the skinny body, the slightly dished nose, the empty eyes which had the faraway look of someone who had spent much of their life staring off into the horizon, searching for something that would never come.

Except this time it had come.

"Ana!" the stallion wailed, and dropped clumsily to his knees. He pushed his snout against her barrel, willing it to rise, but it remained still as a stone. He drew his nose up her body to rest on her cheek, where he stared with wide eyes into her lifeless face. Her body was cool like the sand beneath him.

The stallion stumbled to his feet and backed away, ears pinned. His knees trembled as he gazed helplessly at the body that had been his mother. The last time he had seen her alive was the day he had cast her out of his herd: out of their home. This is my fault. I should never have let her go.

His eyes dropped to the sand, and then he saw what he had not noticed before: signs of a struggle. He jerked his head up and glanced wildly at all the horses before him. "What happened here!? Nasmat!" he addressed his lead mare desperately, his voice breaking. "What happened!? What happened to my mother!?"

And then his eyes turned to the Akhal-Tekes. Only briefly did he look at Valve; in his hysteria he did not see the subtle signs that she was the culprit, and out of the two Tekes, he trusted her more. Instead, he focused on Maslakhat, and his face morphed into a haggard mask of pure rage. Teeth bared, ears pinned, and eyes alight with grief and fervor, he stepped forward and challenged the beast who had done nothing but cause his family trouble from the beginning.

"What did you DO!?"