Orhan

"Who were those mares you were with the other day?" Koray asked.

Orhan tilted his head and squinted in the sunlight to side-eye his growing son. Koray was nearly two now, and his lanky perlino body was filling out into that of a grown stallion. Already he was a hair taller than Orhan, having evidently inherited his mother's height. Orhan could remember being such an age, yet his experience had been quite different to that of his son's. Where Koray had both a sire and dam to look out for him, as well as a small herd and a comrade his own age in the form of Ghostwood, Orhan had had nothing. At just two years old, Orhan's mother had left him to his own devices in the vast wastelands of his home. He'd had no one else but his own thoughts to keep him company, and he recalled his anxiety being sky high during those times. He'd had to grow up fast.

While he was pleased Koray showed none of the same anxiety he had suffered with as an adolescent - perhaps due to the constant, reliable presence of their small family - it troubled Orhan sometimes to see a hard glint in his son's eyes, as if he carried woes he would not speak of.

That same glint was in Koray's green eyes now. Orhan tried to brush off the feeling of disquiet it gave him and offered his son a soft smile. "You haven't spoken to them yet? They'll be staying with us. They're old friends; I've known them since I was your age. You should get to know them."

The hardness disappeared from Koray's eyes, replaced by a kind of obstinate apathy as he turned his head away. "That doesn't answer my question."

Orhan's lips parted, but before he could answer there was the gentle sound of an approach. He pricked his ears and pointed his head to the far side of the oasis, where dark, distant rain clouds were framed by wind-tousled palm trees. There, traversing the low dunes that rolled in from the coast, were two mares: one a varnished grey and chocolate-brown, who seemed oddly familiar, as well as one who was so dark she gave Orhan a turn in his stomach. But she was too petite to be Valve, thankfully. And Ana is dead.

It was peculiar how, even months after the death of his mother, he still somehow expected her to appear on the sands as if nothing had happened at all.

In his peripheral vision, Orhan could see his son peering curiously at the strangers much as he was. It seemed Koray's attention was devoted particularly to the young mare his own age, but he could not be sure. After a moment, the buckskin stallion dipped his head and arced around the curve of the oasis toward the mares, his dark legs gently parting the desert grasses. From behind him, he could hear the shuffle of sand as Koray warily followed a few lengths behind.

When he was a few strides away, Orhan slowed to a halt, lifted his head, and offered the pair a friendly smile. "Hello," he greeted them. "Welcome to the desert. I'm Orhan." His honey-brown eyes shifted to the younger mare, and he studied her for a moment. "I feel like I know you."

Lurking at Orhan's hindquarters stood Koray, his face a careful mask as he took the scene in.