It had been a long swim- not as turbulent as their arrival, but longer somehow in its monotony, and every time their well-used muscles ached, their eyes flicked to the tawny-silver little shape between their body and their surging brother’s, making sure she was still there. He’d shown up with the little thing, looking tense and more uncertain than Anathema was used to, in the Meadow. Anathema didn’t miss the way he shifted when they began to step toward her- not quite blocking them. More of a warning, maybe one he hadn’t even intended Anathema to pick up on, but he’d always underestimated his sibling’s ability to read him.

So they hadn’t pressed. Hadn’t asked. Maybe it had made him more nervous, their silent acceptance and the unspoken questions weighing between them. He’d always been too blunt for that level of patience. But something about the little newcomer had him biting his tongue and swallowing back his usual harmless vitriol, taking Anathema’s capitulation as if it were a blow, hurrying past them with his ears pinned.

They followed, as they always did. But this time they kept stride with the slight legs of the ashy shadow in their brother’s wake, letting him outpace them. She didn’t seem to want to be touched (an understatement, one they empathized with viscerally), when they bent their head quietly to try to brush their breath to her nose, so they turned their gaze away politely and simply walked with her, safely several feet from her doe-like body. Heartbreak kept up his bluster all the way to the water’s edge, where even he had to hesitate, looking out to the distant, misty shape of some other spit of land in the distance. His good eye snapped back to them, quick as a diving hawk. Anathema wondered if he knew just how much his body language gave him away. -No, he didn’t. He was afraid, and so Anathema was doubly calm, drifting up to his side like a ghost.

“…They’re runnin’ from-” he rubbed his cheek on his foreleg, rough, hard enough that it had to hurt- “humans. I think. They don’t talk.” The frustration was so thick it scraped his gravely voice into sharp edges. Anathema wondered who it was directed at; glanced surreptitiously under their lashes back to check on the tawny wisp. Still there. Was that what he was so nervous about? Always too impatient and too blunt for a little silence. Never quite knowing what to do with it or where it was leading without words to tell him. Tilting their head gently to beckon the little ash-amber pony closer as they sidled out of the way to give her generous space between them, they said, very calmly, “Then let’s go.”

—

It was a long swim, and it was made longer by the constant weighted glances of the two siblings at their third party member, taking it in turn to makes sure she was keeping her head above the waves and wasn’t falling behind. Heartbreak hit the shore first, stumbling out of the waves at the mouth of an estuary that wound into a new sea of dark, tall trees, and he turned around immediately, beginning to stretch toward them- Anathema saw his mouth open to grab their new cohort- before he abruptly stopped himself and backed away from the surf with a stormy, nervous look on his face. His sibling, when their hooves brushed the weathered stones of the island beneath the waves, ignored the way his eyes widened and his scarred mouth twitched open in a choked-back curse as they slid their silver shoulder up against her hipbone, ignoring too her hind hoof clattering against their legs. Not pushing. Only there. If she needed it.

“Anathema,” he managed finally in a strangled undertone, his whole face screaming a warning that his sibling continued to ignore.

“Would you like to lie down?” they asked her instead, their low, hollow bell of a voice soft enough to pass for gentle. “I’ll stay with you, if you’d like.” The sound of Heartbreak’s foot stamping in frustration didn’t draw their quiet brown eyes from her face.