Winter arrived and Zevulun was still alive. Rather than choosing to take the harder season as a chance to rest in preparation for spring, he threw himself to the tasks he felt he needed to accomplish. In the mornings and evenings his limp was prominent and his back leg ached, but there were moments throughout the day that he could put his full weight onto it, and the skin was no longer scabbed and pussy, but the healing pink of skin scarring over. Swimming, he learned, was the perfect way to exercise his muscles. It only made further sense, then, that as the first few weeks of winter passed, it was time for him to make the travels off Luthien he had planned. He made certain everyone knew what he was going to do.

One day to Atlantis, the next day to Salem, and he’d return to Luthien on the third. Realistically he admitted he might need a rest day in between, which would double the length of the trip, but Zevulun held fast to the idea that he could accomplish the goal he had in mind. Three days of travel. It was early on enough in winter that he felt he’d realistically test where he was at in his healing and whether or not he would be capable of challenging for the Prairie come spring. If the trip proved to be too difficult, maybe he would need to adjust his strategy.

Either way, Zevulun made for the shoreline early in the morning, before the sun had risen above the horizon line; splashing into the cold water and shivering as he was quickly forced to adjust to the drop in temperature. He surged ahead, seizing the feeling of life coursing through him and how satisfying it was to be able to kick out his legs and swim across the channel.

By the time the pale stallion had pulled himself ashore on Atlantis, he found he was making good time. Zevulun grinned, feeling a surge of confidence rising within him like he hadn’t felt in the last few weeks. He tossed his head and moved forward, trailing the shoreline down into Paradise where his and Freya’s young daughter Fríða ruled. His initial intention had been to see her, to speak with her about Atlantis and how she was faring, ruling a territory at such a young age. Yet, the further he drew into the territory, the more he couldn’t help but pick up on Freya’s scent.

Zevulun had been hiding bits of his heart away, even from the likes of Aurelie, Eierena, and Luna who stayed close with him in the Savanna and had been his day-to-day support, keeping himself focused on exactly why he was working so hard to get their home back safely to them all. He did not want to hide them, of course, but he was afraid of the way they might look at him… Zevulun was certain beneath the love and compassion they shared, those in his family were ultimately disappointed in his disappearance, in his incapability to be the leader he had kept promising them all that he was. He feared that if he admitted the guilt was eating him alive at night, pushing him to right every wrong he’d inadvertently created, they would agree that he should feel that way.

It was killing him to do so. He replayed Larka’s disappointment and cut his heart deeper; he remembered Riesling’s last look to him before they’d parted ways and sometimes found it was so hard to breathe he’d started to gasp. It wasn’t fair to those who had stayed beside him that his heart was cracking in places their touch just couldn’t heal.

Maybe that was why he had kept his mind focused strictly on this visit about seeing Fríða and hadn’t once let himself think instead of Freya. But, walking through the jungle, her scent wrapping invitingly around his pale, pink muzzle, Zevulun caved to his life-long weakness: his heart. The pale stallion’s hooves clipped the dirt a little awkwardly as he changed course quickly, a small, dull pain blooming along his left hind hip. He grunted, but limped forward, used to how to mind his gait in spite of his injury. Zevulun did not stop until he had found where Freya was, and then he came to one quite abruptly. He stared quietly at her, suddenly frozen, caught between the relief that flooded through his body at seeing her and the little voice that told him he had no right to be so happy to see her. She was only going to turn disappointed eyes on him, too.