VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

A feeble call broke the gentle rhythm of the waves—and drove straight through her heart like the blade of a dagger.

It should have been easy for the chestnut woman to continue down the beach, forcing her senses to focus on the shifting of pebbles beneath her hooves and the gusts of wind that combed through her thick ruff of mane. Letting the haze of fog swallow the small dark figure until it was just another shadow—and then, nothing at all. In a past only scant years distant, none of the orphaned boy’s kin could have expected mercy from the red-furred mare. Valka had fought countless members of their tribe, after all, and was responsible for the deaths of at least a few. But time—and grief, in particular—had softened the stone of her heart to clay.

And even the hardest earth was known to crumble.

Rolling one dark eye back in the direction of the colt, the Yakut watched his first attempt to rise impassively. A single ear flicked in response to his failure, but Valka quelled the urge to go to him—leaving the decision of his fate to the strength that he either found… or did not. It was the only compromise that her mind and heart could reach; the only way that she could justify saving a boy whose people had helped to destroy her own. If he could find in himself the same tenacity that she had when death’s jaws had missed her by narrow inches, then the skjaldmær would accept the Icelandic as her own.

As if hearing the tenor of her thoughts, the dark boy tried again—and this time won his battle against weariness and gravity. And though Valka did not celebrate, there was a flicker of triumph in her dark gaze when she turned to meet his approach, nickering to him with a soft note that had not been heard in her voice since Solvarr’s departure. In that moment, it did not matter to the stocky mare that this boy could grow into the very image that she’d been trained to hate. It did not matter that—for lack of mother’s milk-- she had no means of truly caring for him beyond the protection of hooves and teeth. It had even ceased to matter whether the gods sought to provoke or humiliate her with their so-called gift.

Pressing the pale curve of her muzzle into the gentle curve between his ears, nothing could matter more than that moment.

After a moment, the pink of Valka’s tongue made an appearance, and she began to wash the crust of salt from the colt’s skin with vigorous strokes. And where moments earlier she had wandered aimlessly, there was new purpose and determination in every quiver of a nostril or flit of an eye. It would not be wise to linger here long, lest the Bay’s bevy of predators think to investigate the patch of beach over which a number of crows still circled hopefully. But she would at least see this moment of vital bonding through before driving her new charge back to the herd—and hoping that one of Bacardi’s harem would feel benevolent enough to take responsibility for his feeding.

And in such tenuous circumstances, Valka hoped that the life of this young wanderer had only just begun.