VaLkA

mare / eight / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

The world was no stranger to moments like this one. Over the course of its timeless existence, the Bay’s frozen soil had been watered by the fluids of birth countless times, and its pale sky had witnessed the first interactions between a father and their child with monotonous regularity. To the ancient tundra, there was nothing special about the dark stallion who crept forward in awe of the new life he’d contributed to; nothing memorable about his softly-spoken words. But to its skjaldmær, nothing was more profound than the transformation of her Huskarl’s expression when he saw their daughter for the first time. And when his lips skimmed along the length of the filly’s spine, it touched Valka in a place that no-one and nothing had ever reached... not even Solomon. Because for all that the painted stallion and chestnut mare had shared, this was something that they had not.

And for all that Tinuvel’s King still held of her heart, he could never hold the piece that Bacardi won in those first soft, reverent words: she is beautiful.

But where pride had swelled within her following the births of Solvarr and Kesja, it was something entirely different that filled Valka now. A warmth that echoed what she felt when the dark stallion curled around her, standing vigil against the darkness of her thoughts and her soul. And watching Bacardi focus that gentle strength— that unyielding compassion— on the small brown filly, the skjaldmær ached for the gentle brush of his muzzle and the tender kiss of his lips. Not out of passion or affection, but out of need. With Solomon’s departure, with Brynja’s death, with this child’s birth— the Yakut felt that everything was changing; that her world was being reshaped around her. And she needed to know that there would be something left untouched by those probing hands, something constant.

She needed to know that the shore would always be there when her sea rose to meet it.

Whether he read the intensity of her need in her gaze or felt it charge the air between them, Bacardi stepped forward to press himself to the shaggy red mare. And Valka— feeling the warmth of his skin and breath, and the gentle tug of her daughter taking her first meal— exhaled the breath she’d been holding in a soft, sibilant sigh. It’d been too long since anyone had touched her; it’d been too long since she’d allowed it. After Solomon, the mare had always kept a careful distance— a distance that was half wariness and half heartache. She couldn’t let another get close to her fragile, fissured heart; she couldn’t let go of the one who was already gone. Even now, leaning into her Huskarl and breathing in the familiar comfort of his scent, there was a part of Valka that ached for a different touch. For a different scent.

But the warrior-woman stamped that yearning down as best as she could, focusing on the whisper of Bacardi’s voice as he circled around her to block the chilly gusts of wind. She is yours… But she wasn’t; she was his. From the deep brown of her coat to the gold of her eyes to the unexpected gentleness with which she claimed a second teat, this filly was Bacardi. And while Valka struggled to sort through the tangles of emotion this evoked in her, the stallion’s question offered her a means of sharing the most tangible one: gratitude. “Her name…” the skjaldmær murmured, thinking quickly to what she knew of her Huskarl’s past. The Peak, he came from the Peak. Bacardi and his ancestors knew what it was to touch the heavens. “Her name is Falda.” Leaning into the tobiano’s touch, she hummed once in contentment, and then continued— offering what she could in place of the affection her heart was too wounded to reciprocate.

“It means ‘folded wings’. You told me you were of the Peak. And the part of it… the part of that place that lives in you, it lives in her too.” His mother. The Vulcan sisters who'd watched over him. In naming their daughter, Valka sought to honor both.

And to honor her Huskarl, who'd always watched over her.