the happy peace that found her after the birth of her daughters had been lost. the first crack had appeared after the lagoon leader had attempted to take her, unsuccessfully thanks to shamwari, but that was just the beginning. it set her on edge, having so much more to lose than usual. her friendship with shamwari seemed to be too far beyond saving. they could no longer even look each other in the eye. jabari had a new interest, though she could hardly blame him. she had been so distant and unsettled for too long..and busy with their daughters. she never expected to keep him all to herself, it wasn’t the way of things…but it hurt nonetheless to see him choose celestria, the spoils of a raid on warsaws herd. she remembered the grey stallion well… cold and unnerving underneath a gentlemanly facade. the wrong sort to pick a bone with. the mare was pretty in her own right but had a worldly attitude… if she had seemed genuinely interested it may not have been so painful to watch but from her own calculations the mare was only out to take advantage of jabari… but what was she to say? she wasn’t the type to confront him… he would have to see in his own time that she was using him. and eventually he did.
she withdrew, as was her habit…. spending more and more time away from the herd… away from her daughters who had only known her whole attention their entire lives… perhaps she had been preparing them for the inevitable.
when jabari came to tell her his goodbyes, she found she could barely speak. he had risked so much… the safety of their little family… his father… and for what? another mare? revenge? what good was it? had he learned so little the first time? she had no ill will toward shamwari for setting the conditions of his departure….though he was sending something precious away from her. she felt so disjointed from things at that point that she could only nod sadly and breathe in his scent deeply…hoping it would not be the last time… but knowing maybe it would. she had made no promises.
history has a way of repeating itself, though sometimes in different forms and fashions… and while it seems like it was just yesterday she had washed up on the shore of the prairie with vita nova thinking she would never leave again, it also felt like a lifetime ago. and it was. one love and two beautiful daughters, months of unease and a friendship lost…. this time when she slipped into the water she didn’t feel refreshed… didn’t feel that sense of adventure and wanderlust that had called to her before… she simply felt empty. like a cup that needed refilled. she had whispered into her daughters ears…they still slept like a pair of foals after all this time, laying back to back lazily until the sun was high in the sky…telling them how much she loved them.. how someday they would see each other again… though she didn’t know where or when. she tried to come up with a reason.. to explain why she was leaving.. but all she could think of was how she didn’t know how to stay…. she hadn’t learned yet and she hoped they would forgive her someday.
and so petal disappeared once again… as she suspected shamwari had expected all along..and as she thought maybe jabari had feared… like a leaf in the fall, withering away until it became detached from its limb, she finally broke loose and was caught in the wind…. her small lithe body cut through the water like a knife until she grew weary and cold, though it was still summer. she was hoping seeing vita nova would give her heart, though she was unsure how the visit would transpire… she had never been to tinuvel before… only heard of all the drama that seemed to revolve around the inlet king….though it seemed unlikely she wished to avoid him… she hoped her friendship with vita nova and her standing as the lead mare…something she had learned after jabari’s reckless adventure, would allow her to pass through freely after the visit. she clambered up onto the shore and eyed the terrain warily… there was no sign of the smokey black mare she had come in search of… was she in the right place? she didn’t dare wander too far inland… she paced the rocky shoreline, uncertain of why she had come anyway… she thought vaguely that it didn’t really seem to matter where she went as long as she was moving…