VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

True to his nature, her Hersir remained steadfast at her side. But the enemies they faced this time were made of smoke and shadow, as much a part of the shaggy red mare as her lungs, her heart. Bacardi might battle fears and doubts as easily as flesh and blood, but the skjaldmær was not cut from the same cloth. She did not know how to defeat something without substance— something that could not be subdued with the pinch of teeth and the punch of hooves. Only the tobiano male seemed to know what to say in order to banish the darkness, his voice as soft and certain as the strokes of his tongue. You may be the sea, but I am the shore. And for a moment, it was enough. For a moment, she was reassured in the promise that no matter where her whims carried her, the quiet stallion would always be here when she returned.

But with his next breath, the words he murmured were both a blessing and a burden: you are not alone.

Between this and the gently-spoken reminder of her daughter, Valka felt the grey tide of her panic rising again. If she went to the girl, then the hammer’s fall would only serve to strike them both. “I— I can’t Bacardi. You weren’t here when they came before. And Kesja, she— I need to go.” Short limbs clawing at the soil, the chestnut Yakut pulled her body upright, swaying until she steadied herself against the prone figure of her Hersir, then stilling as he spoke his last words. She still needs you, Valka.

Need. It was there beneath everything else— beneath the shadow of her regrets and the tide of her pain. Beneath duty and doubt and sorrow it was there, the sweet burn of desire that was so out of place in this moment, and that lent all the more strength to her fears. Because there was something that they could take from her— had tried to take before— that no amount of bloodshed could win back...

...unless it had already been given to another.

If Solomon were here, she would have fled the stallion’s side and submitted willingly to his claim. But she hadn’t seen the pale tobiano since their daughter’s birth, and feared the worst. Not that he was gone— she’d tested the strength of his will herself, and knew it to be iron— just that he was lost to her. They were both seas, after all, and it was inevitable that one of them should drift apart from the other.

But the shore...

Valka did not, could face her Hersir. Not to ask this of him. Instead, her tattered ear twisted back towards him, catching on the heavy weight of the four words she spoke. “And what of you?” she asked, not certain why the answer should matter so much.

Even if Bacardi did not need her, she had still come to need him.