Meadow

fearghas

Fearghas was slow to wake most days, often preferring the quiet of the nighttime to the noise of midday. He spent warm summer afternoons sprawled near Varanduil, and long lazy summer evenings basking in the cool run off of the Falls. Sometimes they travelled northward, to where the mountains blocked the sun and left shadows crawling across the land, and sometimes they dared to venture south, skirting the marshlands at the border of the Lagoon.

Their life was nomadic now, no longer tied to a leader or a land or to duty. They wandered where they pleased and slept where they wanted with no regard for those around them. If Fearghas could have condensed his very existence to the single soul from whom he still derived something beyond guilt, he would have done so. But the world refused to let him vanish; it demanded his company and his heartbreak in voracious quantities, never settling for mere sadness or the quiet relief of Fearghas' apathy.

He had left them behind - Tuari and Ally and Seri and Arkana and Rade. He'd left them behind but they refused to stay there. Like apparitions tied to his soul in torment, he faced them one after another. Rade challenged him when he attempted to comfort Tuari, even though it was the sounds of a horror stricken mother that had drawn him and not the lure of her theft. Later, he'd encountered Ally and his beautiful baby Seri, and witnessed firsthand what it felt like to have your heart ripped out and stomped upon.

Not that he could blame them. He'd been a piss poor protector and an even worse father.

He was so used to the machinations of heartbreak and sadness that when her figure materialized before him in the gloom, he found that he was not surprised. It was fitting that she would be here, and that he should face her now as he should have, so many months ago.

For a long moment he only stared, his mind roving back to that deliciously light afternoon they'd spent in each other's company, refusing to be burdened by the world. And he remembered the months of uncertainty after, not knowing if she was or wasn't carrying his child. Keenly, he recalled the hatred he'd seen on Evren's face when she'd realized what a disappointment the sire of her grandchild was.

And the baby.

Fearghas staggered in place with the realization that he didn't even know the name of their baby. He didn't know where he, or she, was. Or what they looked like. He wondered if they hated him for not being there.

"Arkana," he breathed, her name tremulous in his mouth. What did one even say to the woman that you'd abandoned because of your own selfishness? At least with Ally, he'd separated from her because he wanted her to stay safe… but with Arkana, he'd never taken it upon himself to seek her out after it had happened. Still, he falters at the last second, and rather than apologizing for his growing list of failures, he opts for the easy question instead. The safe question that will give him any sort of hope at reading her emotion before he replies. "Are ye all right, then?"

Unlike him, she looked well, even if her face wore new worry lines that hadn't been there before. Where he had wasted away during his time on the Crossing, growing thin and muscled from his limited diet of little yellow flowers, she seemed to have flourished. She was no longer the young filly that had raced with him across the Savanna, but a young mare who had deserved better from him then, just as she did now. "I ken it's no nearly enough, but I'm sorry, Arkana, fer what happened."

stallion . 5 years . 16.1 hands . smoky black blanket . loveinspired . credit