Meadow

For a testosterone-riddled cesspit, the Lagoon was awfully quiet. Vitani's two seasons spent as a prisoner - a trinket, they'd called her, ugh - were decidedly uneventful, and only partly due to her own efforts. She'd caught the many scents of the bachelors, saw them in flashes of coat and whispers of hoofbeats through thick curtains of hanging Spanish vines, but she never came close - especially after failing to track down any other mares. Any other trinkets. She was the sole captive, the one woman in a sea of bloodthirsty rapscallions, and if they weren't out scavenging for company on the rest of the Crossing, they had to be getting desperate. With her estrus in full autumn bloom, she wasn't about to take any chances. What happened last year... it wouldn't happen again. And it wouldn't happen to Zira, her innocent, golden daughter, her little drop of sunshine in the Lagoon's all-consuming darkness, who'd helped her to relearn, and understand, every meaning behind Sabor's many hard-taught lessons.

Zira wasn't old enough to catch their attention - not yet. And so, when the heavy silence of the swamp was abruptly broken by the sounds and squeals of battle, Vitani felt only a twinge of worry as she tucked her somewhere safe, made her promise not to wander, and slipped like early-morning fog between the bars of her greenwashed cell.

The chestnut ran due North, skirting the edge of the Common in spite of the heavy tang of musk and moss clinging to her skin, warding off the eyes of any who might claim her. When she reaches the Meadow, she pauses; her gaze scans the billowing golden field, searching for the gleam of her mother's coat in between the fronds, the mahogany of her lost brother's. Nothing. Her ears pin back, tail flicking in irritation. She can almost hear her voice. Foolish girl. Sabor would never make herself such an easy target.

Vitani turns from the wide open space, choosing instead to walk along the treeline. If her dam was here, she'd be in the shadows, cloistered away from the warm rays of the late-afternoon sun. She searches for an hour or so, chasing the last of the light, her pink nostrils flaring, trying to catch any scrap - any faded scent, any lingering trace, anything to tell her of her family's whereabouts.

But something catches her, drawing her up short. A whiff of something she hasn't found in what feels like years: of sea-brine, of pine, of black sand and snow and the howling of wolves in the mountains. Of glowing yellow eyes, staring through the gloom, spearing through her narrow chest and right into her soul.

"You," she breathes, and falls silent with the rest of the world, knowing that he cannot answer.