VaLkA

mare / eight / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

The sea is still the sea.

Like the tides of the primal force she’d been likened to, Valka pulled away from those around her in the days that followed the Cove-King’s final visit. But she didn’t feel like the sea anymore; she didn’t feel like the fierce, undauntable waves that had fallen further down the beach. Instead, she felt more like the pebbled shore that was exposed in their absence. The bare, worn bits of rock were both her flaws and her pain, bared for all the world to see. And the colorful shells that were scattered amidst stone were the bits of her heart that’d been sundered from the rest— shards just as forlorn (and oftentimes broken) as the sea-creatures’ homes. Pieces with names etched into their pearlescent surfaces, some all but forgotten: Eydis, Herja, Signe. Losses that she’d long-since mourned and let go of.

But there were other wounds that still hurt when the skjaldmær probed them, that she suspected might always hurt. Goose. Her brother-in-battle, and the Hersir that had never been. Solvarr and Kesja, the children she’d raised and then released into the world, not knowing whether she would ever see them again. And Solomon, above all Solomon. The hole that his departure left was no less for the time that had passed since— and each time the chestnut’s gaze chanced upon the distant mountains, the border between Bay and Cove, or the familiar stretches of beach they’d once shared, it bled anew. It chummed up the waters of Valka’s so-called sea until wild, wistful thoughts circled the mare like sharks. Thoughts that entertained foolish ideas such as finding the stallion in his home, because it wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be too late.

Only it was. It’d been too late from the moment his voice had risen in anger. Too late— in Solomon’s eyes, at least— from the moment her third child was conceived.

And no less late now, in the moments that followed that child’s birth.

Physical pain, at least, was fleeting. By the time that Valka rose into a stand, the suffering that she’d endured was already forgotten; the filly was all that mattered. And though she’d already cleaned the evidence of birth from her daughter’s skin, the Yakut could not help but to run the curve of her muzzle along the ridge of the child’s spine, through the short tousled strands of her mane, between her ears... and then down until the flat planes of their foreheads were pressed tightly together. Breathing of one another, the girl looked adoringly up into her mother’s dark brown eyes, and Valka— Valka felt a curious warmth and peace steal over her at the familiar golden gaze. Her life might be fractured, broken... but nothing could be more right than the stark contrast of the filly’s dark coat against her own flame-colored fur. She only hoped that the girl’s nature would differ from hers as much. That she would grow up to be her father’s daughter in every sense of the word, and claim nothing at all from the cornucopia of her dam’s flaws.

The moment was broken by a soft nicker and the dull thud of hooves. Tearing herself from the child reluctantly, Valka watched her Hersir— no, Huskarl— appear over the rounded edge of the bluff, as if summoned by the weight of her thoughts alone. And for the first time since they’d come to know one another, the skjaldmær yielded to her companion wholly and without doubts. Giving up her claim to the creature that she already fiercely loved, and letting Bacardi take part in their daughter’s first efforts to stand in her stead.

And proving— in doing so— that like the sea, she had learned to give in and let go.

That like the sea, she could change.