She had been tricked. The little blue roan was still exhausted, still parched and dizzy and starving, but anger fueled her to gallop impulsively back to the Dunes. She knew Bahadir might come after her. If she didn’t collapse before she reached Shay’s home, he knew where she was going, and might hunt her down even if she did make it. Logically, Nadja thought that if he wanted to use force to trap her in the Badlands, he would have used it to begin with instead of a lie and the hollow promise of safety and sustenance; but there was no way to tell. So she ran.

Once in the Dunes, Nadja halted, sending up small tidal waves of sand as her hooves slid to a stop. She curled her top lip to scent the air and recognized Shay’s scent, accompanied by the scent of blood and what she assumed must be the buckskin’s newborn foal. Shay had been very close to foaling when Nadja had left and the blue mare was familiar with the scents of birth. She followed them, too tired to even think about her lost son, though any other time his presence in her mind would have been summoned by the scent of a minutes-old foal, too strongly to ignore.

When she caught up, her rage had subsided and been replaced by exhaustion and burning thirst. She trotted sluggishly up behind Shaydowfax, calling out as she approached so she didn’t scare the other mare. She gave the two of them some space in case she had startled the child, but she reached her muzzle out to greet the new mother before promptly plunging it into the tepid water. She drank for a long time, realizing it was rude to ignore Shay after she had just found her again, but she couldn’t help herself. She was so thirsty.

When she finally lifted her dripping muzzle from the water, the exhaustion was almost overwhelming without the parched thirst keeping her moving. Still, she moved to Shay and dropped her head before the taller mare. "I’m so sorry," she said. "I didn’t mean to abandon you. Bahadir said it was dangerous here, and I was too tired… He promised water." She stopped talking. She didn’t want to list off excuses. She fell silent and waited for Shay’s response.

NADJA