Like ripples that spread across the surface of the Ridge’s still pool, it took only a single moment to alter the course of Hades’s entire life.

Though a fierceness still burned fire-bright in the mahogany boy’s gaze, it was no longer softened by the affection he’d once known. The torn flesh of his face knitted back together in the days that followed his attack, but the raw edges of his heart were another story entirely. Instead of seeking comfort in those who coddled and cared for him, the Ridge’s prince became solitary and withdrawn. He shied away from the gentle touches and softly-spoken words with the wariness of any wild creature that knew what it was to be hunted. And if the other responded assertively— trying to force their affections on him— then these attempts were met with flared nostrils and white-rimmed eyes, his lanky body trembling and lathered in sweat. In time, even Rivaini yielded to his wishes with an aching heart.

By the time summer’s heat had begun to wane, Hades was left to the isolation that he’d fought for. But the dark chestnut found that this victory was a hollow one— that he was no more content alone than he had been in the company of others. In fact, the colt found that he missed the very individuals whom he’d pushed away, and...and... he didn’t know. It was all very confounding, this tangled ball of conflicting emotions that filled up his chest. Fear and yearning, hatred and sorrow and even a strange sort of contentment. Because as keenly as he felt the careful distance that he’d opened between himself and the others, it was safer this way.

Safer to watch from afar— a shadow of the boy he’d once been.

For all that he was distant, however, Hades was not unaware of the creatures who shared his world. If anything, his loneliness made him more attentive to the individuals who formed the Ridge’s herd. There were even new faces amidst the old now, such as the black stallion his mother had been inexplicably tolerant of, even when the stranger’s attentions included the slender ‘Teke whom Rivaini had always guarded with jealousy. Sometimes he saw faces that were not counted amongst their number in the jungle, such as the nameless mare who wore an eerie skull-mask. Or the roving stallions who had arrived with the migratory birds, drifting through less frequently when the false chill of winter finally arrived.

But more than any of them, he followed the young girl who had come by way of the sea.

Head tipped gently to one side, he would watch the filly with a flicker of curiosity in his orange eyes. Seeking to unravel the mysteries of her in the actions that she took, the words that she spoke. Of the latter, there were certainly few enough— and it was this that had drawn Hades to her in the beginning. Even before he had suffered, Rivaini’s son had never been known as a verbose creature, but now… Weaving his way between the palms’ curved trunks, he tracked the pale-maned girl out to the beach, wondering whether she might disappear as abruptly as she had arrived. But after spending a short and otherwise uneventful time playing in the waves, the red child turned inland again, her strides leading her close to where the dark chestnut lingered.

Normally he would have turned and fled further into the darkness, particularly when Faolain joined the nameless child. But when his mother’s beloved shadow reached out to touch the girl, Hades felt something stir within himself: a flare of possessiveness, of jealousy. The girl was his. And the chocolate-colored boy sought to communicate this by flattening his ears and snorting at the slender black mare, even as his small body forced its way between the pair.

Snaking his neck quickly forward to nip at Faolain's shoulder, he coiled around the silver girl and waited— every muscle drawn taut in anticipation of the Guardian’s rebuke.