Riesling? NO FLIPPING WAY! Zevulun looked as shocked as Castillon did, eyes snapping toward Parvati with bewilderment written clear as day across his face. This whole time you knew her? His granddaughter was asking him, and Castillon was looking between his father and, well, niece, with growing confusion.

“Yes, I’d… I’d say I knew her pretty well,” Zevulun tried to recover. “We have three children together and, up until recently, she lived here in the Prairie.” Somehow he managed to say that without revealing his emotions on the matter. He’d gotten better at hiding his heartache, better at allowing it to turn into a dull ache rather than the piercing thing it was. It did not seem odd that he knew Riesling, but it seemed odd that Parvati would, and that she’d have such a reaction at learning about the mare. As far as Zevulun knew, up until she began traveling to the Badlands a couple years prior, Riesling had only ever stayed within the Prairie. Had she had a whole other life he knew nothing about?

The first stallion I brought home when I owned the Thicket was looking for Riesling.

A stallion looking for Riesling? Zevulun felt himself tense. They’d only been right beside them… Zevulun only knew limited pieces of her guarded past, but he knew she had fled from it, and he remembered the look on her face the day she had told him I’m a survivor. Zevulun surmised anyone she had been trying to get away from should likely never learn where she was.

“Did he say how he knew her?” Zevulun asked, somehow managing to keep his tone conversational. Was it a good thing or was it a bad thing that the stallion had left two years ago? Had he left the islands completely to continue his search elsewhere? Or was Riesling in some sort of danger in the Badlands? How was he supposed to get word to her, if so?

But that’s not why I’m here.

“Right, of course,” Zevulun agreed with a short nod.

Have you met all your neighbors on Luthien? I heard a rumor that one or two of my enemies were on this island. Zevulun thought of Bacardi, Sephiroth, and Kvasir and tried to picture them as being enemies of his granddaughter. Admittedly, he struggled. “Yes,” He bobbed his head as he said, “I do know my neighbors. Who are the enemies you think are living on Luthien? And… How do you have enemies?” He wasn’t sure why it felt so outlandish to him that Parvati would have enemies. Maybe it was because he saw her antics as… rather lovable. Forgivable. He remembered she had been a very bold, brash thing when she took over the Thicket, and he’d found it rather charming.