As they walked together, touring the land, Al-Hattaal’s dark eyes catch the movement of another in the distance. Shamwari must have seen her too, and when he stopped so did the Arabian. The mare came closer, moving timidly but not slowly, until she was very close to Shamwari. Al-Hattaal examined her curiously. She was not an Arabian, but she did have a refined elegance he could appreciate.

It was especially interesting to him that it seemed these horses of mixed descent could all cohabitate so closely without any sort of tension. In his homeland the mixed breeds were mostly refugees of the Arabian and Akhal-Teke herds that had run away, forsaken their lineages and crossbred or were the product of rape. Perhaps it was the circumstances of their origins that made them so violent—or at least those were the stories Al-Hattaal had always heard. The blind seer was a crossbreed, and before she left the desert, there was much talk of the blasphemy that she had committed and how she must be punished. Of course, the blind seer was dead now, according to El Halin, and when the black Arabian remembered how he was purposefully ignoring the task the High Seer had set out for him, a nervous tightness formed in his abdomen that he desperately tried to suppress.

“Hello Bri,” he replied in response to Shamwari’s introduction. “Nice to meet you.”

Despite Al-Hattaal’s reservations about other breeds, he still remained polite. He was far away from his desert homeland and these horses were nothing like the ones who came from there. There was no reason to act as if they were.

A L - H A T T A A L
Zaman sana uymazsa sen zamana uy.