VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

In the midst of its short and vibrant summer, Tinuvel was inexplicably quiet— save where its life seemed concentrated in the small, fierce filly who raced ahead of her red-coated dam.

There was a fierceness to the shaggy mare as well when she paused to watch, the pale strands of her mane drifting across one dark eye. But the intensity of her own nature was of an entirely different sort. In her short life, Valka had already experienced devastating loss and the profound hope of a new beginning; had already savored the thrill of victory and known the despair of defeat. Time and again, her strength had been tested, and even where the Yakut had fallen short, she’d always endured. At first, she’d even considered motherhood one of these challenges— a trial to overcome, a battle to win. But now… now she saw it for what it truly was. Saw her daughter for what she truly was.

A gift.

Sidestepping deftly to avoid the grulla filly’s abrupt charge, the skjaldmær continued towards the Bay’s shore. Her narrowed gaze swept searchingly across the sun-dried grasses, and her pink nostrils fluttered as they sifted through the multitude of scents, searching for one in particular. When this inevitable moment came, she’d hoped to rely upon Solomon to keep their child safe. But in the clarity of their separation, she’d begun to question whether he would support her in this… or whether he might try to stop her. Though the wounds that she’d suffered were seasons old, they had never fully healed. And she wanted— no, she needed this. She needed to feel the hot rush of adrenaline and the cold ash of her fury, needed to bleed and draw blood to come alive again.

With a soft neigh of greeting that Kesja echoed, the Yakutian mare found Bacardi where he always stood— a steadfast boulder that even the roughest seas of their existence here could not carry away. He had been weathered by their struggles, to be certain, but no more than the skjaldmær herself. And in the course of those trials, he’d found within himself a certain strength; the same strength that had impelled him to step forward in her defense last Fall. In that moment, he’d won her loyalty and friendship. Climbing the bluff to stand beside him— and laying back her ears in preemptive warning to her prowling daughter— Valka brushed the curve of her muzzle gently against his, and waited patiently and silently for her Hersir to indicate that he was ready to hear her.