Creamy plumes of carbon dioxide fled from her whiskered nostrils with every passing breath. As the sun dipped low in the sky, eventually disappearing beyond the horizon completely, she sighed, internally bracing for the cold temperatures that were to come as the sky grew ever darker. It felt so strange to be the "new girl" in a herd. She'd never really experienced it in this form before. Nova wasn't exactly sure of her status here. Was she technically Orkaan's captive? Or if she decided she wanted to leave this place at a later time, was she free to do as she pleased? Nova of course had no intention of testing her limits with this stallion so soon. Unlike with Koray, whom she tested right away and was defiant every day after her arrival, she was bound here because of Shamwari. It didn't help that she was morbidly obese in terms of her pregnancy. This foal would become a very real thing for her in just a matter of weeks, as the weather began to turn.
Vita Nova remained mostly obedient as time went on. She didn't feel as wary about Orkaan as she initially thought she would. He had prettier trinkets constantly vying for his attention. He seemed busy, too -- intent on dragging more and more bodies here. Therefore the steely mare had little time to actually interact with the heavy-set painted fellow. But the few interactions she did have were not terrible. Though cocky and prideful, Orkaan seemed more level-headed than she anticipated. He listened when she talked and didn't just bark orders. He seemed to genuinely care for the well being of all of those who lived here, even the ones he thought weren't as pretty. After what she went through with Koray, Vita Nova couldn't find a simple damning reason to condemn him just yet.
The pregnant mare followed in line with the others when the temperatures dropped. She bed down in her usual place. Getting up and down from the cold, hard ground was becoming troublesome as the mare's abdomen continued to swell, so she'd taken to dozing mostly while standing up. Sleep rarely came at this hour, however. In the quiet and the dark, Nova's mind ran a mile a minute, thinking about all the lingering issues she had lying under the surface. Fallo. This foal. The expectation of being a mother. Where is Evren? How she left things with Orhan. Evaline and Valve. Shamwari. Jabari. Brienne. This foal. Evren? Her icy blue stare studied the silhouettes of trees in the darkness, blinking in rapid succession as the frame of a painted mare approached. At first, Nova's heart fluttered in her chest when she mistook the mare to be Evren. Nova was reminded of her lost friend at nearly every turn in the Inlet, which was baffling to her. Every so often, she'd pause when she thought she caught her friend's scent in the chilly breeze. Nova would shrug it off quickly though, attributing her confusion to being new to this terrain and the hormones that were surging through her. So she braced for this painted mare to be "Phi"
... but it wasn't.
"Evren?" She whispered back, her heart in her throat now. The sooty-coloed mare waddled over, taking careful steps in the thick snow and dark landscape. "Holy moly, I knew I wasn't going crazy!" She said excitedly, but hushed her tone almost immediately after her exhuberance. She walked several feet away with Evren by her side. Even though she couldn't see her, she could feel the warmth of her friend as they moved away from the herd in the bitter cold. "What are you doing here?"
4 | Mare | Evaline x Valentine | Smoky Back Splash | 15 hh | © Vinyl |
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