There was a warning written in the wind. Kolfinna could feel it long before she caught it’s dreadful scent. In her heart, she regretted venturing from the shadow of her mountain home, but she had come to realise that her girls were no longer content to roam within the borders of the Peak. With all her heart she loved them, and she could no more stifle them than she could will herself to stop breathing (or deny that still, though it was mostly mended and no longer torn, her heart pulled her northward, beyond the jagged cliff where her Mountain yielded to the sea).
She granted them freedom to roam, so long as they waited for her, and stayed within sight of her watchful eyes.
But today was not a day for adventure. A chill ran down the length of the brindled grey mare’s spine, and with a heavy exhalation that left her lungs aching, she snapped her muzzle around, fixing wide eyes upon the two young fillies gambolling lightheartedly alongside her. “Go home, now,” she barked, the tone of her voice pitched firmer, harsher, than it ever had been before when she’d spoken to them (colder, even, than her tearful rebuke had been, when she’d returned to the Peak days before to find them waiting for her, after she’d gone searching for them). They gaped in shock, and Kolfinna turned her ears back, struck hard at the frozen earth beneath her hooves. A shrill call on the wind - a clearer warning of danger, one that even the girls did not miss. “Run!” the grey mare ordered, dashing towards her daughters and forcing them into movement. “I will be right behind you.”
And as soon as they fled north toward the mountain, Kolfinna turned, tense and terrified, but ready to confront whatever predator lurked in the shadows, and harry it long enough that Calfuray and Kalanthia would be safe from harm. When it didn’t appear, Kolfinna’s anxiety increased threefold, and she pranced, restless and nervous, before deciding that she would not simply stand idle (for she was no fragile thing, no helpless victim, not any more, never again). She would not run this time. Not away, at any rate. Not in fear. When she surged southward toward that ominous cry, hers was not a panicked flight, but a course of determination, her courageous path made clear to her.
When she stumbled upon a small gathering of horses, clustering close in alarm, she felt the same fear they did seep into her bones; fear of the unknown. The wrong scent on the wind taunted them, and the grey mare gulped a deep breath so that she wouldn’t lose her focus. “Oswin?” she gasped in surprise, acknowledging the Peak mare who, like Kolfinna herself the season just gone, had recently returned to the Islands, returned home. Before she could seek any details about what was going on, nor take a moment to properly acknowledge the two mares, one gold and one spotted, and stallion who bore stripes like she, a terrible yowling shriek sounded not too far, and thus, Kolfinna understood a little of what manner of creature threatened them all. (Injured? Starving? Desperate.)
The grey mare spooked, whirling about as she sought to scour the trees and shrubs that bordered the grassland. It was too dense, and she could not see. And how would they be safe from what they could not see? How would they know where to run? It was too close, too close, and Kolfinna couldn’t breathe. “The mountainside,” she wheezed. If they could make it to the foot of the Peak, where the rising hills were bare in the winter, at least they would be able to see it coming. And if the creature that hunted them pursued still, there were paths on the slopes that she knew well, ones that were tricky to navigate, along which a predator would struggle to follow them.
Hurriedly, she sought to meet Oswin’s gaze. “It’ll be safer to the north,” she said, hoping that the palomino and white mare would understand. And turning to the others, she urged them: “quick, follow me before it draws any closer!” She could not afford to linger long, if they chose to stay, and nor would she risk following them if they turned down some other path. But she would wait for Oswin, and together they would go back to the Peak, where she hoped her daughters would be waiting. |