Sidika makes the transition from panic to ‘totally natural for your body to be doing’ almost in an instant. Her entire being radiates a kind of surety and assurance that leaves Merwerit almost feeling silly. Certainly she could do this now that her saddle had gone and there was no girth caught behind the baby, right? Certainly mares had been doing it since the dawn of time and she was no different, right?

She ran to Sidika’s promisedland like she couldn’t have gotten there any slower, as though wolves were to descend the moment she was kept from running the dunes, but the sight of the black colt only emphasizes for her the reality that this would not be some unusual circumstance - that she might, at least for the sake of pleasing herself and her Maslakhat, gladly do this more times over. "I-- I think so. I think so but something doesn’t feel..." she cannot articulate it and her face pinches a little in that seed of worry.

She is grateful for the distraction when the other mare interrupts a contraction to bid her little boy to fetch something called bitter aloe. She is looking quizzically when Sidika answers her unspoken question, leading her to bob her head eagerly.

From afar she knows that the shadow the winds bring her is Maslakhat himself, pacing and calling to her gently. She could rock to sleep with that low and rumbling sound. She returns his nicker with her own, knowing he was anxious and being incapable of helping ease that sensation when she barely restrained her own fears. She falls to her side then, a short, but pained, squeal on her lips. She does not feel well, feels the pain and assumes immediately that it must be something off - after all, why are there not more cries like hers with so many horses collected there in Salem. Surely the Arabians hadn’t collected so many people idly!

When there is bitter aloe placed for her near enough to reach, she gobbles it down with barely choking enthusiasm.