Meadow

"Karí!"

Faline's anxious voice echoes through the stillness of the Meadow, punctuated by the soft crunch of her striped hooves through thin layers of snow and hoarfrost. She's alone, and not at all happy about it. The spotted mare had lost track of Myrk, had awoken that morning to find him gone, and while other horses might not have cared as much, she did. A lot.

But things were different now. She had a smaller, more impressionable set of eyes upon her, borne of the hours spent holding the missing dun-striped stallion close, and as much as she wanted to panic, she couldn't. Her daughter was watching her - and so she had swallowed her quickly-growing fear, telling the filly that he was playing one of the games of hide-and-seek she'd favored so much, that she'd been teaching her ever since she was born, that her own mother had taught to her, before she, too, disappeared, never to return.

She worried that Myrk might do the same, even if, up until this moment, he'd never given her reason to think he would. She had spent so long with Roux, had learned the truth of her best friend's ancestry and the secret of her own in the process, and when they'd lost each other, she'd found Myrk soon after, and they'd been attached at the hip ever since. It was so rare for them to leave the other's side, and Faline, true to herself, had kept up the habit with their child. She would never abandon her; she couldn't even imagine it, the pain of it was so great. Every day she watched her spotted little girl, felt the affection in her heart for her firstborn as it grew by the day, the hour, the minute, and wondered how Titania had managed. Wondered how she could have left someone she claimed to love so much, and what impossible circumstance had made her keep her distance.

Karíbú, however, knew only her mother's constant presence. Untouched by a loss so powerful as the one Faline had suffered, she craved the independence she did not have - and so, much to her dam's extreme displeasure, escaping her surveillance had become one of Karí's most favorite games.

Energized by the chill in the air and the wonder of her very first snowfall, she plays it now with zeal, running in any direction but the one holding the sound of her mother's voice. She weaves along the tree line, twisting her narrow body through the bones of the sleeping forest, and when she tires of that, she leaps into the Meadow proper, her skin twitching with every tiny flake that lands on her buttercream coat. The girl canters forward, sparing a glance over her shoulder to make sure Faline isn't following close behind. By the time she's turned back around, there's a tree in her way, and even the dig of her small hooves on the slippery grass isn't enough to keep her from slamming into it, sending a deluge of featherlight snow and crisp brown leaves down upon impact.

Karí stumbles back, a tangle of legs and childlike irritation, her ears pinned back. Before she can start yelling, though, she notices it - notices them: a pair of horses, neither Mama nor Papa, standing a short distance away on the other side of the tree. She pauses, anger forgotten as she watches them with her brushlike tail aloft, teeth clacking away. She'd played with other foals before, under the watchful eyes of their mothers, but never without Faline's careful supervision - and now that the situation had presented itself, that she was finally doing something on her own, without her mother there to guide her, she was beginning to wonder how much autonomy it was she actually needed.

Not for long, though.

"Karíbú," Faline calls to the girl from yards away, free of the trees herself and striding quickly closer, "if you don't come back to me this instant -"

And then freezes right alongside her, ears perked and eyes as wide as saucers. She hadn't seen Calfuray in years, not since they were both leggy half-growns, but she knew that face, that scent. They were sisters, in every other meaning of the word if not by blood, and Faline, sentimental creature that she was, would not soon forget the filly - now mare - who had been presented with a near-mute weanling and, along with grey-striped Kolfinna and brave, bold Kalanthia, had taken her in as one of their own.

"Calfuray?" she says, her nostrils flaring with uncertainty, and resists the urge to throw herself against the pale mare's chest.