VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

In the days that followed Solomon’s visit, the shaggy chestnut’s life fell back into its familiar patterns, though the pieces of it no longer fit in the same meticulous order that they once had. In fact— no matter what the duty she buried herself in— the skjaldmær could not escape the soft seed that had taken root in the hard soil of her heart. Could not escape the changes that confounded her. She felt like… like a stranger trapped in her own skin. Like a clump of thistle torn free from its stem and sent spinning through the air. A restless yearning had joined the steel pillar of duty, pulling her in an entirely different direction. Pulling her towards the mountains to the southwest. Towards the Cove, and Tinuvel’s painted King. And with an irritated sort of bewilderment, Valka realized that she missed Solomon. That it was his company she ached for— the sound of his voice. The warmth of his touch.

The energy that charged the air between them when they met, like the ominous presence of a gathering storm.

Clouds were crawling across the sky today, but they were not the dark veil that portended nature’s ferocity. Instead, they were gentle curls of mist that were nearly translucent against the pale blue backdrop of sky. Skeins whose progress the red Yakut followed more closely than she tracked the movements of the Bay’s scattered herd. Enthralled in the fragile beauty of this moment, it took a few precious moments for the evidence of Valka’s other senses to reach her. For the scent of an unfamiliar stallion to drag her dark gaze downward and paralyze her stocky body with a chill of combined apprehension and anger that froze her down to the bone.

Though the skjaldmær had come to understand that not all nomads were hostile in nature, the habit of assessing them as an adversary was impossible to break. Deep brown eyes drink in every detail from the elegant lines of the Friesian’s body to the subtle ripple of muscles beneath his inky skin. Judging his strength in these small clues. Weighing whether to call upon her Hersir, to alert those she protected of the potential danger drawing near. After a moment, her motionlessness shattered and her silence held. Arching her neck imperiously, the ember-colored guardian descended the bluff that she favored to forestall the stranger’s advance— and then was halted by the sight of the pale short creature all but curled into his side.

For the breadth of a few heartbeats, Valka faced the pair in silence and uncertainty, muddled gaze studying both— and then the jagged stone of the mountains that silhouetted them. Though she had never judged Solomon as the sort to trust another male in his home, it was clear enough that the black stallion and his red-dun companion had come from the Cove. And this in itself was enough to soften the harsh lines of her expression, if not the suspicion that swam in the depths of her earth-colored eyes.

“Solomon did not warn me to expect visitors from Cove herd,” the Yakutian female greeted, addressing both but finding her gaze drawn to the other woman by the stallion’s unspoken submissive cues. Sensing the inexplicable aura of tension that surrounded the Fjord mare, she forced her chin to tip downward and her ears to cup forward. Giving these strangers the offer of peace, if not the guarantee that it would remain once their intentions were made clear.

“But as his ally you are welcome here. I am Valka, skjaldmær of Bay.”