I would honestly love you now,
But I would lovingly let you down.
Everything was moving so fast, Jabari had no time to process it. Instead, the painted stallion relied on his instinct, just as Shamwari and Ruger had taught him. He caught a knee to the chin, as the roan mare clocked him with her foreleg. But the stallion was not deterred. Jabari vowed not to get aggressive with her, or anyone who didn't deserve it for that matter, so he took the hit without retaliating. The painted stallion grunted and tossed his head wildly in response, but kept the pressure on her, using his body to attempt to push her closer to the shoreline. Adrenaline coursed through him, fueling his muscles and his legs to keep pace with her as she balked and fought against him. At first, the shrieks of another sounded distant and muffled. But soon a shooting pain stemmed from his hip, and he was kicking out instinctively against it.
Jabari whipped his head around, thinking he was about to see the great Warsaw or one of his second stallion type cronies, but it was his aunt instead. Vita Nova lashed at him with her teeth, and finally, she'd gotten his attention. Jabari backed away from the mare as Vita Nova shoved her way in. But he was confused. "What the hell are you doing here?" He shouted over her cries, his mind so jumbled that for a second, the stallion had a hard time figuring out which was up.
Vita Nova kept talking, as she was known to do and began to fill in the blanks. "Wait a minute. Wait! WAIT a minute!" He shouted at her in quick succession, when she kept on blabbering over him. "You LIVE here?" He asked, no, demanded. "You live with him, after everything Shamwari did to protect you?" He could feel a second flood of adrenaline kicking in, and the stallion momentarily felt lightheaded. He pivoted on his haunches and began to pace, back and forth and back and forth, as he tried to wrap his mind around what Nova was saying. Suddenly, the poor roan mare didn't seem to matter so much anymore. But his feelings of anger and his lust for action, while dwindling, still bubbled in there somewhere.
"You know, you're a piece of work Vita Nova. I always stuck up for you when Evaline and Shamwari would call you selfish and self-centered. But you know what? They were right." Jabari spat, his ears buried in a bed of mane at his poll. "I mean, you're sleeping with the enemy? You came here on your own free will? That's just pathetic."
The family squabble continued, until the mare Jabari had been so intent on stealing just second ago chimed in. The stallion just couldn't control his anger any longer. "Yes, she knows me! She's my aunt! Shamwari is her brother." He shot back, before turning his blue eyes back on his aunt.
"I can't believe this." He said, too buried in his own thoughts to worry about the many warnings Nova had given him to leave. He needed everything to slow down for just a minute. The stallion breathed a great sigh, and looked at the roan mare again, his eye more sympathetic this time. "Listen, I'm sorry if I scared you. I was wrong. I didn't mean-" This was perhaps the worst raid attempt ever made by any stallion in history, Jabari thought, as he continued to try to apologize to his own victim.
A sense of defeat washed over him as the weight of what he'd done - and what he'd now learned - began to bore into him.
"Tell him yourself." Jabari said, his voice more melancholy now than full of spite. "What happened to our family, Nova? It's shattered. It's gone." He knew it was time to leave. So he took a step forward and nudged his aunt roughly with his nose. "I'll probably never see you again." He said softly. He shot the roan mare one last long glare too, before turning to head toward the water, his coat still damp from his arriving swim.
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