VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

The sea had grown wild and wary since fall’s final warm breaths, as if it were a reflection of the chestnut mare who stood at its edge. Watching the waves pummel the shore with a rhythmic ferocity matched by the pounding of her heart. Witnessing their retreat each time she sought to touch them, and understanding in that moment how Solomon must have felt. Had the heart of Tinuvel’s King been worn down like the stones beneath her hooves? Her fault. He’d wanted Valka to be his, but she was not the sort of creature who could be owned. She wasn’t soft and meek and warm like the women stallions on the islands seemed to prefer. She was fierce and cold and distant, and— and—

Anyone can change, skjaldmær. But the sea is still the sea.

—and she just couldn’t let go of the walls she’d built around her heart. The prospect of baring that fragile organ was terrifying after a lifetime spent guarding it, denying it. Only her Hersir had seemed to understand the meaning buried beneath her silences, the fear that evoked the careful distance she kept between herself and others.Valka had lost her family once, and it had nearly broken her. Then she’d recognized their flaws in her own growth, and it felt as if her tribe had died a second death— one that felt more final, more real in that it made even her fondest memories unbearable. And even the thought of losing Solomon or Bacardi in that way threatened to crush her beneath a boulder of grief. It was better not to let such devotion take root in the hardened soil of her heart. Easier to relate to them as King and Huskarl without the curious warmth that threatened to soften her.

But that warmth still won out in Valka’s moments of weakness. After she’d watched Solomon turn away from her. When she’d staggered back the Bay gravely wounded and afraid. And now. Now when the points of her ears tipped back at the sound of a distant call, a call that sent her thrumming heart into her throat. After seasons of absence, the shaggy skjaldmær might have wondered whether she was dreaming, if not for Kesja. The grullo filly was making a game of splashing in the tidepools, of clawing arcs of seawater into the air with one hoof. But at the sound of the stallion’s cry she froze, quivering, dark-rimmed ears cupping forward. Pointing inland, towards the desolate tundra and snow-capped mountains and—

“Solomon,” the red woman murmured, turning around slowly to face him. Drinking in the sight of him standing there as strong and vital and whole as he’d ever been, while she felt like a crumbling ruin of herself. Like the island the sea had swallowed beyond the Crossing’s western shore. And before she’d decided to, Valka found herself flying across the flat brown grass, the tangles of her creamy mane unfurling behind her. Lungs threatening to burst, heart aching in a way that was both bitter and sweet. Whiskered lips curling back to show blunted teeth as she slowed to circle the champagne male, her dark gaze intense and unreadable.

Then— in the time it took to inhale a single, ragged breath— driving for Solomon’s shoulder with jaws agape, a creature as beautiful and savage as the sea.

And as mercurial. Whatever flesh she might’ve managed to grab, the skjaldmær released it quickly. Twisting away from the Cove’s ruler as her chest began to hitch and heave; a still pool wracked by the storm of her emotions. Ears pinned and hindquarters tensed, she faced the ocean again, faced the grey filly who approached them quizzically, cautiously. “You said you wanted me to be yours.” She snarled, feeling the syllables ring hollow in her chest. “And then— then—” —then you abandoned me, she might have continued. But as quickly as it had come, her fury ebbed, and her voice faded into silence. For a moment, there was nothing but the mournful song of the sea, nothing but the wind’s gentle sigh.

“Was it real?” She finally breathed in a voice that broke, the tide of her grief rising to bury her.