Vihar had been under no illusions about the magic of pregnancy, but she was still taken aback by how different it was than she had expected.

As the eldest of Nadja’s children, Vihar had watched her mother carry and birth her siblings before she had left the Cove. Thinking about it made her heart ache with unexpected homesickness, but it also seemed to give her strength. Carrying a foal was not easy, but it wasn’t difficult, either. Vihar found that the worst part was trying to sleep with the kicking in her belly. The little thing was feisty, not that it should have been surprising. Vihar herself was a spitfire, as was Annubis, so it would stand to reason that their child was just as fierce, if not more.

As she grew closer to her time, however, she had other fears creep in that kept her up at night just as much as the child. She saw Annubis on and off as she continued to play her games with him, trying to keep herself busy; trying to distract herself from the growing tension in Paradise. More and more, she found herself drawn back to the Cove, to her mother’s side, and to the safety of her father’s watchful gaze. But for the sake of her child, she could not yet leave the cloying heat of Atlantis, or the watchful gaze of Annubis.

She tried not to show her fears to him. The silvery painted mare buried her feelings deep, hiding them easily behind tumultuous mood swings and the already explosive nature of her relationship with Annubis, and blaming the storm of her emotions on the pregnancy. Even if she had not been plagued with hormones, she had never found it difficult to bat away her feelings to avoid dealing with them, like swatting a fly. She was restless by nature, and moved too quickly for her problems to catch up.

She wasn’t sure when she had gotten into the habit of running from herself. She supposed it might just come with the territory of her nature, which was competitive and volatile, and never still — or it might have begun with her pregnancy. It could have been a combination, or it might have something to do with the brewing storm within her new home, and the hostility that was festering there, even though it hadn’t yet been directed at her as far as she could tell.

There was one thing she could not outrun, however, despite her multitude of reasons for fleeing, and it came for her in the dead of night as she was baiting Annubis to chase her. She had run from him and hidden herself away, and suddenly she was hit with a great shock in her belly, and a mixture of relief and regret that she was alone.

Did she want the silver buckskin here with her? Part of her did, as she curled into the dark earth, shadowed even from the moonlight. She was fond of him, in the type of way that she was loathe to admit to him. But more of her was relieved that she was alone. She did not want to show him weakness. She did not want him to see the blood and sweat she knew awaited her, as the contractions rolled through her like storm clouds.

No, she was grateful to be alone — but she was scared, and between stifled cries, Vihar could not hold back a strangled cry for her mother.

speech