Meadow

"It is," he confirmed, his gaze seeking hers in the darkness. "I am," he answered softly, surprised at her line of questioning. You came... She murmured and his brow furrowed, even as he offered his answer. "I did."

The fierce warrior began to explain her predicament in halting, faltering sentences rife with an uncertainty he'd never seen in her before. For him, at least, the change in her attitude was the most glaring symptom of whatever it was that troubled her, but he caged his tongue and let her continue. The dim light haloed the edge of figure, throwing the swollen heft of a child into stark relief as she continued.

"No," he lied at her question, unwilling to burden her with a guilt that was unneeded. "The night comes fast here," he murmured softly, his gaze back on her face. "I was dozing when I shouldn't have been so really, I should be thanking you."

Nerves still jittered beneath his skin as his mind raced through different probabilities, reminding him that he was young and untried. It was only the presence of a possible emergency that allowed him to keep up the facade of a competent, calm healer, and only Shenzi's meaning to him kept him from delving immediately into the clinical symptoms.

Her hesitant admission of having nowhere to go breaks his heart because it was so reminiscent to the way that he felt. Boldly, despite the fact that they have never known each other in such a way, he stretched so that he could touch her shoulder briefly in an attempt to steady them both. "You have me." His voice was firm despite the fear underneath it. He could offer Shenzi no safety or security, no home in which to lie her head or shelter in which to rest, but she had him in her corner. She was not alone in this world. "I'm here with you."

Silence followed his statements, and he could feel her struggling to say something. From a cursory, visual examination, there was nothing that seemed outwardly wrong with her. No fresh wounds or scrapes, nothing obviously different from the last time he'd seen her other than the heft of her pregnant belly. Geçersiz hadn't had much experience with childbirth after his mother passed; stallions who would let him heal wounds and sicknesses were understandably far more hesitant to allow a strange stallion near a laboring mare or her newborn foal. Consequently, he couldn't say how far she was to foaling in the dim light, but she didn't seem to be in active labor, which was a relief.

His gaze pulled back to her face as she confessed the true reason she'd come to see him, and his face grew still as his heart broke for her. Geçersiz reached out instinctively again to try and comfort her, wishing he knew the words to say that would soothe the pain in her voice.

"You won't," he promised, despite having no real idea if he could help her. His mother's lessons on the herbs and plants best utilized for pregnancy and childbirth had been mostly focused on desert-dwelling plants, as that was where she had assumed they would both live out the rest of their days. His time wandering the Mainland had taught him plenty about the sort of plants one could find on the Crossing, but their use on pregnant mares was largely up for debate.

"I will stay with you, Shenzi, until you are ready to be rid of me." He couldn't have said where the words came from, only that it felt, in a way, like something his mother would have said. He'd give anything to still have his dam beside him, her guiding light showing him the best way to help her longtime friend. "I know of herbs on Salem that can encourage the baby to wait until it is ready, and to strengthen them before it is time..."

He tries not to think of the Dunes. Of the bright sun and of the rolling sand. They can go anywhere she likes - the Badlands or the Desert or the Hills, and he is certain he will find what he needs. Wrapped up in his own memories, the little black panther is momentarily blinded to the meaning such a place might hold for the Barb mare. It is only as his next question leaves his lips that his golden eyes rise back to her face to find her reaction. "Do you think you can make such a swim, once you are rested?"