Home was far away.

He looks around at where they are now. It was strange. The air smelled stale in his nose and he missed the salt of the sea. It was pitiful, he thought. Look at what they had become! His father had made them run like rabbits from the menace and now they were here in this place not meant for them. Matoskah stood among them. He counted them to make sure. If he were lead, he wouldn’t have let something like this happen–Matoskah knew he would protect what belonged to him even if it meant his death.

Quietly he listens to his father. His ear flicks, then his mouth twitches. He wants to stomp his hooves and demand they go back–he wants to burst like a dam with all the things he feels inside his chest. Hurt and shame and embarrassment and fear. He would never admit it, how afraid he truly was because then he would be no better than his father. Matoskah looks at the mare Dierdre, her words of encouragement to the group leaves a sour taste in his mouth but he doesn’t dare say anything yet. He didn’t know much about her, they hadn’t spoken together. The only thing he did know was she belonged to his father, for now.

It’s when his mother resounds the same words, her gentle brush of the cheek. Matoskah snorts, he lifts his blocky little head. His eyes, dark and pinched, scan his little family for any sign that someone might be on the same page. Doubtful. All their talk of being together and being a family and it all spins madly in his head.

“For now,” he says, finally. His voice is caustic and rough. He tries very hard not to let it crack down the middle like a split tree. Matoskah looks at his mother and he knows she must be wondering how her son can speak out against his own father. “We’re together for now but how long before some other stallion comes along? How long before someone takes mother or Deirdre?”

The young stallion can feel his blood rushing in his veins. “How can you all be okay when someone took our home from us? From father?” Matoskah pants out the last few words, he feels his skin rippling with anxious energy. “What if he comes back for one us? Who will stop him then, father?”

He can hear the bitterness in his own words and he knows, without having to look, his mother must be shocked by what he has said.