Persephone was not the only one who had been foolish. These days Evren was silently wracked by more guilt than she’d ever felt in her life, primarily because of her falling-out with Shamwari - as much as Persephone had reassured her that that had been smoothed over - but also for another, more secret reason that she had told no one.
At first, she had been too wrapped up in the stress of the impending war to give her coupling with Shamwari more than a moment’s thought. When she did think about it, it was in the quieter moments of the day or late at night as the rest of the herd slumbered. Evren had always been a creature of impulse, and that moment had been little more than a cathartic release of pressure for her and Shamwari both. There were times, when she found herself watching Persephone, that her gut twisted with some strange kind of shame, as though she had committed some unspeakable crime, but these moments never lasted long before Evren was reminded that she had much bigger things to worry about.
But now she was certain that her actions had invited more consequences than she was prepared for. The signs had been subtle at first, but eventually they had become too much to ignore. Where Evren had once been thin and lean - even skinny, due to her lack of appetite the past few months - she now found herself ravenous almost all the time, to the point where her patrols were almost twice as long due to her frequent stops for snacks: something that had happened during her pregnancy with Han too. She knew she would need to reveal the news to Persephone soon, before it became too obvious, but something in her wanted nothing more than to shove the issue to the back of her mind and not think about it until she was forced to.
With all this on her plate, Evren had failed to notice when Persephone seemed more preoccupied than usual. Therefore, she suspected nothing when the mare approached her one chilly winter day. Evren lifted her head from her grazing and offered Persephone a tight-lipped smile, her belly fluttering when Persephone brushed her muzzle against her own. At the mare’s question, Evren hesitated, and let out a half-hearted chuckle.
“Well, I’m alive,” Evren replied. “I guess we should be thankful for that. How are you, Sephy?” Evren’s amber-brown eyes softened as she gazed at the mare, and she found herself thinking back to several weeks before when Persephone had comforted her following her argument with Shamwari. As much as the memory warmed her heart, it gave her another pang of shame. How could Persephone be so consistently good to her, when all Evren seemed to do was get her entangled in her own drama?
9; mutt; bay tobiano; 15.3hh |
