Gabbar
stallion . arabian . bay . 14.3hh . 6
The mare’s hooves barely scuff over the sand as she moves closer and he feels the heat of her body beside his. This sensation is becoming less and less unfamiliar to Gabbar the longer he calls these Isles home. He is used to the rough shoving among his brothers and, in more recent years, the attentive stillness he once maintained beside Valve. Back in the desert he was never once selected to accompany a mare anywhere, nor chosen to breed. He welcomes this closeness, foreign though it is, and nearly leans into it. The soft drag of velvet across the top of his shoulder, however, is so strange that his skin shudders and he jumps away from Avangeline’s touch.
Always, always he expects teeth.
Gabbar holds himself steady and focuses on what the slender mare is saying. It’s praise, all of it, and he has to resist looking to the other side of himself to see who she is speaking to, for even though they are the only two on this dunetop, Avangeline cannot possibly mean him. Stop, he begs himself. You’re beyond that now.
A short, nervous laugh escapes him. “It’s still hard,” he says in a voice so soft it might not have been anything more than an exhale. It was like this with A’idah, too: so overwhelming, in fact, that when the flaxen chestnut Arabian had touched her muzzle to his he had fled after babbling what might have been an apology or an excuse. Gabbar has not thought about her for a long time, or about any mare outside of a platonic context. Even Valve, for whom he feels an undue amount of physical attraction, has existed in his imaginings as distant and unattainable. It is beyond the bay stallion’s comprehension that he deserves kind touch.
This time, at least, he stands his ground. Gabbar takes a deep breath. “You are kind,” he tells Avangeline, and then, “Thank you.” He shakes out his mane and allows his heart three more aching beats before he tosses his head again and side-eyes the Akhal-Teke with a grin. “I’ll race you to the oasis,” he challenges her, then takes off down the side of the dune with a whoop, sand flying under his hooves in great sprays, consoling himself with the thought that at least this time he’s running with a mare instead of away from her.
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