Meadow

Leaving Hallow in the Forest had been difficult. Mercury had too few ties to the Badlands to stay there after Vadim had disappeared, and she was too close to the end of her pregnancy to risk going back to the Lagoon, so she went to the next safest place she knew.

Truly, Mercury wondered why she had ever left Luthien. It had always been good to her on the few occasions she’d stayed in its temperate woods and rolling meadows, and it was the best place she could think to go in that moment. It wasn’t the safest, but it was predictable. Better under the circumstances than, say, the Ridge, where her mother and her mate’s father were inexplicably shacked up together. Mercury and Faolain had never been close, and although she held no particularly negative feelings toward her mother, it made her kind of itchy to think that she and Vadim shared at least one half-sibling.

No, that was a can of worms for another day, and not one to open during the birth of her third child.

Once Hallow was old enough to be left alone for some time, Mercury tucked her into a thicket beneath Bacardi’s protective rule and set off for the Crossing. Snapdragon had not accompanied her off of Salem, and she wondered where the painted girl had gone after both of her parents left. Mercury felt guilty for having left her behind, but… well, Snap was no longer a filly, and Mercury was not the type to try and force. She had been an independent child herself, and fostering that same independence in her own children was important to her.

Mercury doesn’t expect to actually find her daughter on the Crossing. She had intended to use the large central isle as a starting place, just a check on her list before she went back to Salem. She is surprised to find Snapdragon’s trail almost as soon as she reaches the shore of the Meadow, as though Snap had beaten her here by half a day at most.

Head slung low, the icy-pale buckskin moves inland, following her daughter’s trail. She pauses in the fringes of the Meadow, ready to cross into the Falls, and takes one last glance over the golden field before she hears the call.

“Snap?” she asks, her head twisting around toward the source of the call. It had come from the other edge of the Meadow, closer to the Common, and Mercury picks up a trot in that direction. She spots Snapdragon’s painted form as she draws near, and slows to a brisk walk.

Letting out a friendly whicker, she approaches her daughter with her head extended to brush her muzzle against Snapdragon’s cheek. “I didn’t think you’d left Salem yet,” she says. “I was going to go there next to look for you. Where have you been?” she asks, her tone warm and curious, holding no hint of the parental accusation that so often accompanies that question.