Day by day, her daughter grows.
In sunlight Isabella is a cheerful thing, chattering and happy and content to wile away her days frolicking with her gallant psuedo-brother, Jay, who has taught her how to swim and encouraged her out of the shell Izzy donned after the thwarted raid.
Rhadra's ears flick back as she strides through the Crossing. Well does she remember her first days here, fraught with promise and the adventure of the unknown right up until the fear set in after she crossed paths with that cunning, cruel stallion and the darling girl who called him mamapapa. Had she encountered that brooding soul when she, too, was just a filly? It might explain her juvenile mentality— or it might not. Isabella has exhibited no such signs of mental immaturity, at least not beyond what is expected of a girl her age. Lately she has been testing Rhadra's limits. Always back before the sun sets, however, for by moonlight—
By moonrise, Isabella might as well be called Rhadra's fifth leg. Her daughter gravitates toward Rhadra as each day draws to a close, so by the time darkness has settled over the land, Izzy stands quivering at her hip. It is behavior befitting a newborn, not a yearling, and though she has tried and tried and tried to ease her daughter into a sense of security once the sun sets, nothing yet sticks. Always, Rhadra's impatience is tempered by the memory of her own sister snapping at her when she was lonesome, and always Rhadra speaks gently to her daughter.
But she worries for her.
The mares of the Peak are not prone to congregating, and without a band stallion to oversee the harem there seems to be no reason for the Vulcans to do more than partner up— if they choose to keep company with anyone at all. Rhadra, too, has fallen into this habit. When Collision is in the territory, she keeps near him, and when he is not, she holds her own with the children up at the heights of the mountain, where they may exist unmolested by passing ne'er-do-wells.
This is not the life she imagined for herself, much less her daughter. Rhadra wanted to be in a herd, to be part of something, to share company with her fellows under the diligent eye of their stallion. And once, she'd thought that's exactly what was going to happen.
Except it didn't. Rhadra recalls that handsome bay face with a sinking heart. The secret glade in which they shared their tryst is overgrown, his scent replaced by grass and trees and many seasons worth of winds. He had had no herd, and Rhadra had had no stallion.
She tosses her head and pauses to look around her. It is brisk today, but in a way that seems to enliven the horses mingling —and flirting— here in the Meadow. She skirts around them all and continues her contemplative walk, heading unconsciously toward the beach where she might lose herself in her thoughts more thoroughly accompanied by the beat of the ocean.
Now she and her daughter live on the Peak, a place so isolated that one run-in with some rowdy bachelors has been enough to remind Izzy that monsters lurk in the dark. Rhadra will always be thankful for the mares who came to her and the children's aid when the raiders arrived, but she does not know them, does not share a camaraderie with them as she would in a traditional herd. Perhaps, surrounded by the security and socialization only a herd can provide, Isabella will shake this fear that haunts her and flourish once more. Rhadra misses her vivacious daughter, who was once so full of questions and interest in the world but now seems to forget how to laugh whenever a cloud crosses over the sun.
The black mare lifts her head as her hooves sink slightly into sand. She expects to see an empty beach, hers for the walking, when her dark eyes pass across the shore, but they are hooked by a horse cloaked in a motley so familiar it makes her heart lurch, pulling her inadvertently toward the stranger shaking saltwater out of his coat. He looks like home. This, and this alone prompts Rhadra to shelve her introspection and worry for her daughter and to be, for one moment, just a mare and not a mother.
She whinnies over the sound of the surf and, once she's certain she has the stallion's attention, trots down the length of the beach to join him. It is instinct that makes her pull her knees high and tuck her chin to flaunt the feminine curve of her neck, but it is nostalgia that draws her muzzle toward his, seeking his scent, wondering if he is from the same river-bordered hills she once called home. He smells of wet and salt and himself, a powerfully masculine scent that, while dizzying, recalls her abruptly to her own senses. He is a stranger, not an old friend, and Rhadra retracts her muzzle modestly lest she give too much the wrong impression. She has not come here looking for any dalliances, after all, and while there is no guarantee she can carry another foal to term —as far as Rhadra is concerned, Isabella is her single miracle— she is hesitant to leap blindly into more maternal responsibility while still floundering with her first child's health and happiness.
“Hello,” Rhadra says in a small, shy voice. "I don't mean to be so familiar, it's just— you look very much like someone I once knew. Are you— have you come from the mainland?" She fumbles over her words, and wonders if perhaps it would not do her some good as well to keep company with more horses than just the children.
rhadra