There is a soft hush of movement through the trees some distance away that makes Yael tense and fall still. The fog that had rolled through the Bay is thinned, but it still dampens scent and sound, so for a few moments Yael can only tell that it is a horse on the other side of the underbrush. A horse who is also, clearly, listening to her. There is no way, she thinks, that someone who belongs in the Bay would be hunting her.

When the stallion rushes through the frosted undergrowth, Yael rears up to meet him with a shriek. She is untested, unscarred, new even to playful sparring, but Yael responds to the attack with an eager ferocity she hadn’t expected of herself. She pushes back against the smoke-and-bone male, terrified but at the same time furious as she had never been furious before.

He does not seem surprised by her fighting response, and Yael does not even interpret any anger or frustration in his expression or his movements, though she hardly has the time or the mind to look at his face. Is he enjoying this? She digs her heels in, striking out with her front hooves to keep him back, before whirling around and firing off a few rapid kicks in his direction. Her ears are pinned beneath her wild dark mane, and her amber eyes are rimmed with desperate white. She has no idea what she’s doing, only that she must keep him away from her, to hurt him if he touches her, but a part of her that is rapidly unfurling to take up all of the space within her wants to hurt him anyway, even if he runs. Wants to hurt him badly.

"Zurok!" she bellows, her rear hooves slamming one final time into the earth and pushing off so that she charges forward, away from the intruder and deeper into the Bay. "Fell!"