He knows he has strayed too far. He had promised Bozena that he wouldn’t venture farther than the Falls, and they are but a distant rumble behind him now. It isn’t that he felt a desperate yearning to wade through the grasses at the meadow’s edge, nor did the pledge slip from his mind so easily. It was strange, and he felt pulled in two directions. The dark colt halts for a moment, and casts a glance back over his shoulder, towards the towering mountain in the distance, tall enough to draw any eye, but it draws his not for the might of the massif itself, but the might of a single mare who calls the snow-capped Peak home.
The heart trembles in his breast as he is swamped by a wave of intense longing, the desire to run all the way back, to scale the foothills and search the slopes until he found her, and seek to tuck himself beneath the curve f her neck, their hearts beating the same rhythm.
(It is the first time he thinks of Bozena without thinking first of his matka, and when he realises this a moment later, his stomach twists with guilt.)
Kuraz finds himself trapped by his indecision, and he almost turns back. But something draws him still, and the young kladruber finally gives in to his curiosity, turning his head and lifting his chin a little, peering down his roman nose with dark, intelligent eyes. There is no-one here that he recognises. No mares from the Peak, most of which he knows by sight only. There is no-one here who seems a threat. The pale stallion he mistook for a ghost is not here, nor does the gentle breeze carry any hint of his scent.
The colt ventures only a little farther into the meadow before he stops. There was a line that he wouldn’t cross. Even though he’d already left the falls behind, to continue on would only feel like a betrayal to Bozena. She had not forbidden him from exploring, nor had she drawn the promise from his lips – he had made it willingly, and already he had tarnished it. His ears turn back in self-admonishment, and then his eyes catch sight of a figure so familiar it startles him, and sets his heart to racing.
It is not Bozena. It is not his matka. Bozena has business on the mountain to attend to, and his matka wouldn’t be calmly grazing, not until she knew of his fate. His eyes may try to deceive him, but the scent in the air does not lie. Masculine. Unknown.
“Vidím tě, Přítmí.” The youthful call leaves his lips unbidden, and as his voice rings out, Kuraz tenses, eyes widening a moment, and though several others glance his way, the colt’s attention is firmly fixed about the ebony stallion. At the first sign of the stranger’s understanding and acknowledgement, Kuraz takes a few steps back, and half-turns away. Never in his life has he met a male of his kind, and his time with his mother on the mainland, and with Bozena on the Peak, has taught him to be wary.
And so, without dallying further, and remembering his promise, Kuraz turns and bolts. For though he still feels torn in two, pulled between the strange male and towards Bozena on her mountain, there is certainty and safety in Bozena’s presence, and the caution of his matka is carried deep in his bones. Kuraz runs, even though he knows the stallion will easily catch up to him long before he can reach the foothills. But he is unafraid, for there are many others milling about, and despite his wariness, in his heart he believes that no one carrying the same blood as he does could ever wish him harm.
