ooc: fairly certain i'm going AWOL for a few days so wanted this up.

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The air had grown stagnant – filled with loose morals, bruised egos, and a faltering of conviction.

She felt it since the rallying cry came across the Peak: a slip. Worry edged the youthfulness of her features, and she found herself in want of change. The winds carried fortune across the Isles, fortune, and the expanding warmth of Spring. It held promise, and with the quickening peace swathed about Amunet’s existence, and she found herself unbound by the Peak and its’ warriors there. The Commons and what the girth of her belly meant beckoned her down from the Ivory Tower. The winds held him in it, and so she did not seek out the serenity of the Falls, or the moderate peace of the Meadows, or the wrathful hunger lingering in the Commons. Amunet knew where she was to go. She had in so many ways, had given her word to him. Although, with the war’s slow decay, she supposed it was unnecessary. Still, the weight in her belly spoke of something more and urged her back to the sea.

The ink of her hide gave to algid froth and briny kisses; the darkness of her widened figure was slow in descent, and the swim that soon followed was arduous.

Still, Amunet dare not stay.

The time was coming, and Amunet knew what that meant.

The desert was calling.

With glee, she found herself upon the shore; and her belly swayed and rocked with the labored steps in loose sand. The desert greeted her with its warm breath, and moonlight swallowed her pitch figure. Her legs ached and stretched beneath her. Their trim lines moved with care and caution. Her eyes watched the stars reveal themselves in the clear sky above, but as serenity swayed in her peripherals, Amunet knew the journey had not yet met the end. No, it seemed her timing was well enough, as early as it was. Somehow, the body knew and understood that something was amiss. She’d no mind nor experience to guide what would follow; nor had the lone mare known what to expect. No, the horrors that followed came quickly and would be deeply-seated in her heart for all of her many years to come.

- an interlude -

It was cold.

He stood shakily, and the discomfort overwhelmed his gangly figure. It set deep into his bones and fed into the trembling of his extremities. The nameless colt was fraught to find the steadiness that continued to escape him. The night loomed at his back, and the sun threatened to break across the horizon. But, he knew he was not alone.

“Son,” he was greeted by a soft voice; a sound offered a breath above a whisper. Velvet pressed against his brow, and warmth pulled from obsidian washed across him. A kiss, from the trembling night, a tender one was placed across the sparse flash of white atop his head. Her breath stirred something familiar, yet wholly foreign all at once. He leaned into her lean, dark legs, and felt along her side with his nose. All the while, she continued to caress the soft velvet of his ears.

He could not know at that moment, could not understand what such expressions meant, but in the pre-dawn, the shadow smiled.

She leaned into his space further, drawing her lips against the hollow of his cheeks, and pressed those lips to his ears.

“My Son.”