He was gone again, and just like that, so her heart was broken once more.

By now, the pain of loss was almost its own sort of comfort. It was the sort that she knew well, an ache that lived deep within her chest that ebbed and flared as the Islands took and gave in turn. Knowing heartache did not make any less overwhelming, but offered her the perspective with which to keep herself mostly together.

If not for her own sake, then for Deidre and Sindri.

The new mare that had arrived was Ysabel's daughter, which should have given Siobhan some relief and yet it did not. Siobhan knew firsthand how deeply Ysabel's resentment toward Bjorn went, and while her golden friend had never expressed any reservations at Siobhan's choices, the red mare nonetheless assumed she had them. Ysabel had already done so much for Siobhan's family that Sio couldn't bear to inconvenience her more, nor would she run the risk of forming any attachment to King Solomon.

Taking two lovers from her friend were grievous enough marks on her record, and she had no wish to go with a third.

In truth, Siobhan wanted to consider herself done with love, if only to harden her heart against future loss. The six years she had spent on the islands had been filled with a roller coaster of emotions and she was so very tired of waking each day with the hope that things would be different, only for them to end up the same anyway.

Nothing, however, would ever dull the adoration she had for her children, and with a soft nicker of summons, she called Deidre to her and then angled her path toward her youngest son. He was growing quickly each day, and she knew that soon he would hardly resemble the baby she remembered. Like his elder siblings before him, Sindri would soon be old enough to go out and explore the world on his own without the cautious fetters of her concern.

She both looked forward to and dreaded those days, especially knowing that with Bjorn and Ailill's absence, she would have no new child to fuss over come the springtime. For the first time since arriving on the islands, she would bring forth no new life, and that was a pain all its own that she often pushed to the side to consider later. As she walked toward him, Siobhan's warm gaze found the young figure of what must be Parvati's child: a precocious filly that seemed to have no shortage of energy. Somewhere behind him stood his mother, and Siobhan winced internally.

She'd been hoping to simply take her leave without much fanfare, but she should have known that there would be little other distraction in the empty Inlet for the other family. Sooner or later, they were bound to cross paths and with that crossing of paths would come an awkward goodbye.

"A leanbh," she greeted him warmly, forcing the tiredness from her face as best as she could. She stretched to run her muzzle down the proud arch of his little neck and then turning to offer a smile to the other precocious weanling. "And who might you be?"

Deidre trailed behind her mother, a shadow of her former self. The sudden absence of the majority of her family had stolen much of the wind from her sails, and the carefree adolescence she'd been enjoying was now suffused with a heaviness that she had never borne before. Her gaze rose to her brother and his new friend momentarily but then skipped away to the horizon, as if by sheer desire alone she could materialize her father from the gloom.