but i was not blind;

Evrain speaks her freedom, and Claret cannot help but shudder in relief. His warm muzzle extends and she accepts the touch gratefully, letting out a choked little half-sob. However it happened, however Marceline died, she’s free. All she’d gleaned of the situation was the Red Queen leaving, heading West and vowing vengeance on some slight her uncle had given.

She hadn’t returned.

Did Evrain kill his mother when her back was turned? Or perhaps it was her uncle, Rafe, who she did not know beyond what she saw – him preventing her mother from an attack that surely would have seen her seriously injured or dead, trying to placate both women, do the impossible and free Claret without wounding Marceline’s pride.

Either way - her captor was long gone, fled from the Hills the moment Evrain’s triumphant call rang out announcing the new leadership. And apparently, the young king had no intention of continuing her imprisonment. And a good thing, she silently thought to herself. Isik may have been a match for her father, but this yearling certainly wasn’t.

He was right, though, to make her pause long enough to eat the bare, rough grass she was able to stomach. Claret is a shell of herself, wasted away and half-dead. She refuses to stay as long as it would take in this wasteland to put the weight back on, and Evrain does not push back. He escorts her quietly to the sea, and Claret swims for freedom, for home.

When she lands on the shores of Luthien, so achingly familiar and close to home, she has to pause for a long moment on shaking legs, sides heaving. They’re at the southernmost point, and will have to cut through the Savanna and the Forest to make it back to the Prairie. Once, Claret wouldn’t have even questioned it. The lush grasses of her homeland spread before her, and even in the height of autumn she would have been safe - none of the leaders she would cross had any reason to hold her back. But what has changed in her time held on Salem? Who will she have to skirt around or beg leave from to make it home?

Finally, with a shaky breath Claret lifts her head and glances back to Evrain. “You’ve done more than I have any right to expect,” she tells him softly. “You don’t have to stay - I can make it from here. It’s only a little further now, and I promise I’ll tell my mother and father of what you did for me.” It isn’t a dismissal so much as a release. He’s only just come into his power - does he really have the time to be away from the Hills and here halfway across the world? She is grateful for his support - Claret knows she would have been lost in the ocean or have given into the tides and drowned if not for his steady presence ahead of her.

Part of her does not want her strong, royal cousin the see the tears that will inevitably come from their reunion. And another, larger part of her does not want him to know what she reports back to Zevulun - for all he is her blood, Claret is finding it….difficult to trust anyone but her herd these days.

WIthout waiting for a reply from Evrain, she limps forward. The sun is setting over the brilliant autumn colors around them, and the air smells of life and moisture and the rot of leaves and all the precious things that she has ached for – not bare sand and hot stone, endless wind and dry, brittle grass.

Her assumption is right and she is not hassled - the scent of new stallions are strong in both of the neighboring lands, but they do not approach and so Claret does not worry. When she steps foot across the well-marked path into the Prairie, she breaks out into a faltering run. “Mom?” she shouts, glancing around in desperation. “Dad? Castillon? Anyone?!.”

Perhaps sprinting was a bad idea because when she comes to a stop, Claret’s head is light and her lungs are pounding. Her legs shake again, and this time she sways for a precarious moment before deciding no, she will not face her family on her knees. But she can’t look anymore - she has to trust that they will come to her. The little stream that feeds the lush grass is nearby so she makes her way to it cautiously. It won’t hurt to start to replenish herself while she waits.

claret