As much as Solomon wanted this arrangement to work, he was still keenly aware of the fact that their knowledge of one another was supremely limited. Valka's face was as unreadable as usual as she listened to him lay everything on the table, leaving Sol to wonder if she was going to take offense to his words. She would not have been wrong to accuse him of being unprepared to accept a Queen's rule. It was hard enough to swallow his pride and accept Warsaw's rule in the beginning, even though Solomon had possessed no burning desire (at the time) to claim the title for himself.

To accept Valka as his Queen would be to ignore his long-held beliefs regarding the suitability of mares for solo leadership. It would have meant accepting that even a heavily pregnant and vulnerable Queen would have the authority over him, which was something he was not ready to concede. Valka had won against him while pregnant, but Solomon firmly chalked that up to his own reticence to hurt his unborn child, rather than any great battle prowess on her part. The simple fact was that no matter how great of a fighter Valka was, and no matter how stringently she guarded her own womb to prevent such vulnerability again it would only take one opportunist with boundary problems to render her at risk... and as a Queen, it would also mean that the rest of them would be at risk as well.

Thankfully, his honesty seemed to have jostled something loose in the pony mare and rather than reacting to his questions with hostility, she answered them with the same frankness that he had put forth. With surprise etched on his face, he watches as she shifts to stand alongside him. In the grand scheme of things, her movement is a small gesture, and yet it is loud to him. Every discussion they'd had to this point had been on opposite sides of some unspoken line, as if even their very conversations were crafted out of combat tactics.

As Valka began to tell her story, Solomon stayed quiet, his gaze resting on the horizon. The images she conjured up of a culture so devoted to tradition that they would ignore basic biology at first made him amused... but the longer he thought about it, the more similar it seemed to the way he had been raised. Had he not been raised to believe that mares were the weaker sex? That they were more slaves to their emotions and not as strong as their male counterparts? That their natural position was subservient to a stallion and that they were vulnerable when pregnant and easily swayed while nursing. That to them, a child was a liability, and to a stallion, a strength.

And yet, had he not had his ass handed to him by both Xiomara and Valka? Nearly Wasp as well. Had they not proven to him on multiple occasions that they were just as adept as he at managing herd life, even if their methods were unconventional? If all of that was true, then was his family's propaganda truly that different than her own? The comparison rendered him thoughtful and he held onto his silence, one ear still cocked toward the pony mare.

Her last phrase circles in his mind for a moment - would have broken before he bent - and it reminded him vividly of Judas. The black patriarch of Solomon's family would have snapped before he ever thought to soften enough to bend and the echo of her statement in this context is enlightening. There were still many things about his grandsire that he wished to emulate, but this, he realized, was not one of them. Up until now, he had counted his inability to force his might upon the other denizens of the Islands as a fault of his own. A failure on his part to prove his worth as a leader and a direct outcome of allowing himself to grow soft in those years of relative comfort beneath Judas' rule.

Now, he realized, his ability to bend and to learn from these contortions, even if they had been forced on him against his will, was a strength of a different kind.

Solomon sucked in a pensive sigh as he listened, turning to her only when he could feel the residual anger in her gaze. It does not surprise him to see the fire in her brown eyes. He'd grown accustomed to the strength of her feelings over every matter they had ever discussed, but it was interesting to understand that for once, he was not the target of her ire. The man she had once protected as her King had wronged her, and the grudge she bore was deep. If he wished to avoid the same fate, it was evident to him that he needed to be better than the figurehead in her past.

The urge to be just that was startling to him. Not because of the way it extended to cover everyone that he considered his to protect - both in and outside of the Cove, but because the urge originated in her. Solomon wanted to be better for her. She deserved to have someone - anyone, really - that she could look to as a confidant and co-protector; not as someone that she was subservient to, but as someone that she could look to on days that she was too ill or too tired or too weak. Someone that she knew that she was safe with and could rely on, no matter what each new day brought.

His gaze sharpens on her once more, just in time for her to do literally the last thing that he expects. Even as his thoughts strike a new level of warmth, he was unprepared for her to return the unspoken sentiment. He freezes as if a small forest creature had alighted on his lap - although he fully understood that this particular creature was perfectly capable of biting and scratching her way free if she tired of his company. Only after she takes it further - resting the side of her face against his shoulder - does he breathe again, his gaze darting back out to the horizon as if to find the answers in the waves. He didn't understand what had inspired her to reach out this far, but he was not about to complain. This was the bridge he had hoped for in the beginning, before he'd had words to describe its shape.

For a moment they only stand side by side, each absorbed by their own self-reflection. After a long, quiet moment, he craned around to touch his muzzle lightly against her forehead before speaking again, his voice lower in their more intimate circumstance.

"I think I will always need the advice and perspectives of those that come from different backgrounds than my own." An unseen half-smile quirks the edges of his lips upward and he turns back to face the ocean, his gaze still distant and thoughtful.

"My grandsire did not call himself King, but he might as well have. He ruled by forcing everyone around to fear his wrath, and then overwhelming them with numbers. I used to admire him," a dry chuckle accompanied this statement, wondering if she would connect this small tidbit to the rush of children in the Cove… and the subsequent dwindling as the years had gone on. "I realize now that his plan had a lot of flaws, and created a lot of collateral damage." This much was true. The list of allies that had counted Judas as a friend all the way up until the black stallion betrayed them was nearly as long as the list of his children.

"I don't want to rule that way. I don't know exactly how my rule will look," he glances to her then, wanting to understand the rare depth of vulnerability that he was offering. "But it is not just my well-being that I care about on this island."

Solomon