Meadow

Despite his certainty that she was there, somewhere, a part of him had still doubted that she was truly real and not a mirage sent to punish him. He'd dreamed often enough of coming across the fierce brindled mare again that he would not put it past himself to be imaging what it would be like to encounter her here, where his grief seemed heavy enough to be tangible and the memories of their first meeting were so loud as to be overwhelming. Her voice dispels the possibility of their meeting being a mental trick and he swallows hard against the lump in his throat.

He waits, breath held, for her bitter words to come. The accusations, both deserved and non. The hatred and the loathing and the resentment he has extrapolated from the way she'd snarled at him on the pebbled beaches of the Cove. He expects her to lunge at him, to bare her teeth and strike and yet neither happens.

Instead, the plush velvet of her muzzle brushes against his own tenderly and he stares in shell-shocked confusion at the mare who has every reason to hate him. I know, she says, and his brow furrows in confusion. The shock of her acceptance mingles with the overwhelming reality that she is here, right in front of him. Her body is made of flesh and bone, not just memory and regret and she is so close, so close, that he could reach out and touch her. And I know why you are here, she says. Does she? Because he doesn't. He can't explain why his restlessness has led him here, nor why fate has brought them together again, nearly a year after it had all began. There are words he wants to say, and apologies that have worn racetracks into his mind, but they hang back, too dazed by her appearance to fulfill their purpose.

Solomon stands stiffly, locked in his own mind as she presses closer to him, burying her forehead against his body. Her absolution is so easily given that a part of him believes it to be some elaborate trick, a farce meant to elicit the worst sort of hope from him so that she could dash it moments later. But nothing comes. There is no punchline, only the same desperate, bare-filament of emotion he has experience himself and something in him breaks for her again. For a moment he is frozen, indecision warring with a desperate desire to comfort her. His pulse thrums for a few heartbeats until he caves, bowing his neck to draw her more tightly against him, comforting her now as he should have then.

I didn't love him, Solomon. It hurts to hear her admission, but what reason did she have to love Uriah? He had wanted their child, but that didn't mean that she had. As her tears track from her cheeks to his chest, he pulls her closer, wishing he could soothe the broken hearts - both his and hers - that he had caused. "No, shh, no," he murmurs into the tangled inky tresses where his muzzle presses, not yet truly interrupting her but also not willing to allow her to believe, even for a moment, that he agreed with her self-blame.

"No," he says with some finality, his words choked with emotion. "It's not your fault Sabriel." He does not yet know how to handle the emotions that tangle relentlessly in his mind, but he knows that he does not blame her. There had been a moment, right after they had lost their son that he had desperately wanted to push the fault on her. It would have been easier for him to blame her. To say that she had led him on, that she had refused his protection, that she had put herself into that position with Cullen. It would have been easier, but it would not have been right. Again he drags his muzzle in a smoothing gesture down the proud bow of her neck before speaking to fill the silence, his tone heavy.

"I named him Uriah," he offers with a sad smile. Somberly he pulls back far enough to brush her cheek with his lips. There was still something terribly sad about saying Uriah's name aloud, knowing that their son had never had a chance to hear it while alive. But Solomon couldn't have buried him nameless, as though his life - however fleeting - was transitory and not worth mentioning. Hesitating for only a moment, he hastens to reassure her. "And no scavengers got to him. He's buried not far from the beach... if you ever want to talk to him." Solomon is thankful that she cannot see his face, nor the tears that prickle at the backs of his eyes for the first time since the day it had happened. He is not a creature given to showing his emotion, much less ones that make him seem less manly or more vulnerable. "I do sometimes." And apologize, he adds mentally, not quite ready to make this admission, even to her.

This time, when Solomon pulls back, he does so far enough to meet her warm, dark gaze with his own. "He exists for us, Sabriel."

For a moment the champagne stallion lapses into silence, struggling to word the tangled mess in his mind. "You weren't ready and I didn't listen." With a slow movement he brushes the strands of her forelock from her face, arranging them neatly off to the side. "What happened wasn't your fault." He takes in a deep breath, hating the truth in the words he issues next. Had it been anyone else, or any other situation, he would probably have kept it to himself, sans the addendum. As it was, the words rip him apart from the inside as he voices them, his heart unprepared for such vulnerability. "It was mine."

Solomon