Falls

Any hesitation Çiçek still holds melts like the last snows of Winter as Solomon closes the distance between them. She can’t press quite as close to him as she’d like, what with the roundness of her stomach, but what she can get still thrills her, and she leans into his soft caresses with renewed ardor. Çiçek bends her neck around him, running her muzzle under his bicolored mane and inhaling deeply, lipping a few strands in protest as he pulls away. She’s loath to let him have even a centimeter of distance from her, settling for taking comfort in the depths of his smoldering jade gaze as it meets hers. The spotted girl has missed him more than she initially thought, she realizes, studying the strong panes of his face. His voice rumbles in both her ears and her chest, travelling from skin to skin. At his initial comment, Çiçek’s smile cools, lingering on her lips but leaving her warm brown eyes.

She gathers her thoughts, wondering how best to explain her decision without alarming him further. She can feel the tightness in the way his muscles bunch against her, sense the concern flickering beneath the surface; the golden mare wants to smooth the wrinkles in his brow, to make him as sure of her as she is of herself and her own ability to make the right choice. Hadn’t her choices led to this very moment? She could have stayed wedged between her Guardians, rejected Solomon’s advances, and remained in the Ridge, but she’d picked a different path, one that brought her back into his arms and tied them together through the child now stirring restlessly in her stomach.

Her whitesplashed King’s lips in her mane send tingles down the length of her spine. She laughs in response to his questions, a high, trilling bark muffled against the place where her nose trails absentmindedly along the point of his withers, and pushes her weight into him in gentle admonition. “My Guardians insisted I take them with me, as a reminder,” she murmurs, her voice mimicking his teasing tones. “Though whether it’s for me or for you, I’m not sure.” She hadn’t considered it - and she would have made them decorate her one last time, anyway, even if they hadn’t offered - but perhaps her little trinkets were as much a mark of the ones who loved her (And would come calling if they thought she’d been mistreated) as it was of the place she’d found within their hearts.

Çiçek muses over it for a moment, stroking along the length of Solomon’s wide back. “Perhaps there wouldn’t be so many if I hadn’t demanded they let me go alone, but…” She sighs, looking askance at him, trying to gauge his reaction. “I couldn’t let them leave the Ridge vulnerable just for my sake. Not after one of the second’s mares was stolen.” She worries how he’ll take the news of the last few months’ turbulence; more often she had heard cries of battle in the distance, and though she never seemed to be personally involved in things, she felt the consequences of all the goings-on just the same.

“And anyway,” she continues on, pointedly refusing to give him space to interrupt, “the swim from Atlantis to the Crossing was very short. It was nice, actually, to stretch my legs a bit, and to have some time to myself before the baby comes.” Her voice grows soft again, her gaze like plush velvet as she pulls back, briefly, to look at the man who has changed her life so irrevocably.

As if on cue, the foal rustles about in her stomach, likely awakened from the absence of the gentle rocking her walking gives. Çiçek shifts her weight a bit, slightly unnerved by the weird feeling of it but glad for evidence of the child’s vitality, as she is every time it moves. “Ah!” she blurts as it kicks, striking at the side of her ribs that leans into Solomon’s broad frame, as if demanding the space its sire’s own barrel takes up. “Did you feel that?” Her tones grow mirthful once more, and she tugs on his mane again, hoping he will let her pivot the conversation away from hard, sad subjects and into something that brings her so much pure, unbridled joy. “Our baby’s missed you, too, and it hasn’t even met you yet.” This is why she comes now, before she’s too big to swim or the child is born. These moments are irreplaceable; if she could make her way to him before they were missed entirely, she would - and she did, all in one piece, with a smile and a crown of tropical blooms.