Kvothe didn’t know how it happened. One moment her daughter was there, and the next she was just… gone.

While the slender red mare was all too familiar with life’s trials, motherhood presented a new set of challenges that she was not prepared for. By the time they reached childbearing age, most young mares had already been tasked with watching over their rambunctious younger siblings and ensuring that they did not wander too far. Yet the chestnut Friesian had been an outcast, a stain on her mother’s lineage - and thus she had not only been permitted more freedom than any child should be granted, but also strongly encouraged to take advantage of it and keep a respectful distance from her dam’s side. Only Kvothe’s quiet, cautious nature had held the burgeoning curiosity of all young creatures at bay, and kept her safe. And Pike - to both her mother’s delight and dismay - was not the same girl that her mother had been.

Having scoured every possible hiding place in their small clearing, Kvothe began to wander further afield, searching for any signs that might indicate the palomino filly’s passage. By the time the sun had disappeared beneath the fanged silhouettes of Tinuvel’s mountains, the fire of her panic had burned out, leaving ashen dread in its wake. There were numerous reasons that the Inlet’s intimate herd bedded down close at night, but the most prominent of them was the nocturnal predators that were known to roam its frigid landscape. Listening to the spine-tingling sounds of canine song in the distance, a flutter of fear disrupted the steady rhythm of her heart’s beats. Even Warsaw himself - a stallion who had still been powerful, if past his prime - was attacked and gravely wounded by a pack of wolves last winter. If they were to find Pike before she did…

Kvothe could not even allow the thought to run its course, and walked faster - as if she could hope to outrun it.

It was only moments later that she heard a different sound; one that filled her heart with warmth and her thoughts with courage. Mistaking the strange stallion’s call for Ironclad’s, the baroque-bred mare chased the sound willingly to its source, certain that her Prince had found their daughter. Glimpsing the shadow-dimmed glow of golden fur in the distance, she uttered a glad little cry and let the wings on her hooves carry her straight into the embrace of a stranger.

Not willingly, of course. But such had been Kvothe’s fear - and such was her relief now - that her senses had been warped, clouded. In short, she saw what she wanted to see because the alternative was so unthinkable that her mind rejected its reality. Of course, the delusion could only last as long as it took for her dark nose to brush lightly over the bachelor’s golden shoulder, for her nostrils to catch the unfamiliar musky scent that pervaded the air around him. For her dark eyes - already beginning to widen from realization - to glimpse the strange mosaic of his coat. And then she stepped quickly back, haste causing her to stumble over her own hooves, and making her feel as clumsy and awkward as, well, the daughter that she’d just been searching for.

Pike. It was only the thought of the filly that held her firm, only fear for the welfare of her daughter that kept her from fleeing. Stranger though he might be, there was a chance that this stallion might have seen her daughter. “I - I’m sorry,” she stammered, the sinuous curve of her neck and the dark pools of her eyes both lowering themselves in deference. “I thought you were - I mean. Please, I’m looking for my daughter. She’s been missing since this afternoon.” Her voice was husky from the grief that was barely held in check, and for a moment the corners of Kvothe’s vision glimmered beneath the thin veil of moisture.

But, blinking furiously, she banished the tears before they had a chance to begin in earnest, and clung to the slender hope that this stranger offered her.