The season is far from over, though Yael might have tricked herself into thinking it was winter already. Her heat had vanished, and the Bay had already been dusted with its first round of snow. In the morning light, the thin powder holds on to the frosted ground, but Yael knows that it will melt by afternoon. The days are still fairly warm, for a few hours at least.

The pine needles and the fallen leaves, still crusted with delicate icy lace, crunch under Yael’s hooves as she slips through the shade of Zurok’s forested corner of the Bay. This is familiar territory for her, though the scents she has grown up with no longer linger with the strength she had been used to as a filly. Fell’s herd stays in the central valley these days; moving outside of it had never been common except for the occasional wandering individual, as the Bay was too vast for one herd to occupy all of it at once, but stragglers are even more rare these days. The herds might mingle at their edges during the warm days when foals dash away from their mothers and must be chased to the fringes of their homes, but everyone returns to their places to keep warm during the night.

A chilly autumn breeze cuts through the morning air, and Yael snaps her long tail at her still-slender flank, shivering lightly beneath a coat still in the process of thickening for winter. She doesn’t mind the cold, and in fact rather enjoys its playful little bites in the early months after she’s been spoiled by the warmer weather. The nipping winds are like a familiar greeting.

She is young enough to not yet recognize the earliest signs of pregnancy, and in truth she hadn’t expected to conceive so soon in the season. It isn’t until this morning that she puts together the signs. She had gone for a walk, on her own in Zurok’s forest while he attended to band stallion duties (patrolling, she assumes), exploring the familiar landscape and finding all her childhood hiding places. Now, she returns to where she had bedded with the black stallion to wait for his return. She would tell him when he got back.