I DON'T WORRY,
WORRYING DON'T AGREE
THINGS THAT BOTHER YOU, NEVER BOTHER ME!

The Salem deserts were a familiar place to Talya, despite having no conscious recollection of them. Thirteen and a half years passed since the last time her pale hooves stepped into the warm, soft shifting sands that made up the Dunes, but her body remembered it even if her mind did not. She had not forgotten this place willfully, as she often did with things she disliked or upset her. It had only been time that had taken the memories away, but standing beneath the bright sun she felt a familiarity stir inside her. These were the places she had taken her first steps.

This was where she had stumbled away from her mother’s side while the yellow mare napped, away from her twin brother, and became lost until she eventually found Mamapapa and stuck to his side like glue from there on. Now, Talya had purposefully forgotten Mamapapa at his last request, so when she thought of the painted stallion she’d found as a babe, he only remained some vague, unknown thing in her mind. Memories tried to tickle at her, later ones to identify who he was, but they came with a swift pain and a tightening in her throat, a panic that might inspire her heart to beat a little faster than was normal, so Talya would consciously force herself to stop thinking of it.

Thus, her days in Salem went as such. She and Kestrel enjoyed exploring the territory Frey had claimed; it was so far different from Atlantis, where they’d spent the last couple of years, and even further from Luthien, where they’d been before. Daffodil had remained behind in the Shore, finding herself a happy home to live in. They’d made promises to visit, though with Talya’s swelling belly it was becoming more and more apparent she would be able to swim for some time.

Giving birth was no longer a strange and frightening thing to Talya as it had once been, given she’d done it three times over by now. But while Daffodil’s birth had been uncomplicated, the new child she brought into the world was not - the contractions came with the burning pain like Kestrel’s had, and she groaned fitfully into the shaded sand where she’d eventually crashed down. Kestrel paced a little ways off, looking worriedly in her direction at every noise of discomfort she made.

Visions danced in and out of her head the further soaked in sweat and weaker she became, trying to push the babe from her womb. The same way she had been assuaged by them during Kestrel’s birth. The surroundings, though, were not the place where her first child had been brutally killed, so Talya was spared those memories. In between the rough shoves of her muscles and the weak shaking of her limbs, Talya remembered little moments beneath the Salem sun of a pale, painted filly following dutifully at a gruff stallion’s heels.

By the time the little body slumped out onto the ground, she was weak, drenched in sweat despite her perfectly selected place (a shaded area beneath a large tree, just a few paces off a watering hole), and her cheeks were streaked in tears. She had cried out a time or two during the hardest contractions, and it drew Kestrel worriedly near. He watched her with nervous, dark eyes. “You have to help the baby, mom,” he said, his voice cracking, and it was only then that Talya blinked her blue eyes and noticed her son had been crying too.

Help… the baby? Talya slowly lifted her head from the sand - it felt as though it weighed a ton - and looked around, seemingly lost, before she glanced toward her hind and saw the little babe squirming in the birthing sack. She blinked away the haziness from the memories, slowly remembering where she was, and despite the pain coursing through her body, she managed to grunt and turn herself to sniff in the direction of her newest foal, and then lurched upward to her feet, albeit quite shakily. A few huffs of breath, Talya turned to help the babe break free of her birthing sack, marveling over their pretty gold color that seemed to melt into the palette of Salem. Her little desert baby.

“Hello,” she greeted, happiness and love soaking her vocals even despite the exhaustion in them. Talya licked over the babe, cleaning her, and Kestrel inched ever closer, curious to look over his new sibling. He had been there when Daffodil was born, too, so the event was not quite new to him, though his prior sister’s birth had been nothing like the event this one was. He glanced worriedly over his mother, but despite the dark stains of sweat, the red staining her tail and back limbs, and the sand stuck to her coat, she seemed okay. She was looking over the new foal, nudging her, encouraging her to stand and even giggling a little as they tried to use their shaky limbs.

“It’s a little girl,” Talya said, looking over at Kestrel and smiling, “you have another sister.”