Meadow

The nicker comes, warm and low and male, and Riesling lifts her head, honey eyes narrowing. Thousands of equines on these damned islands, and the one who finds her might be the one she least hopes to see.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. Seeing Daire would likely be worse, because if Riesling knows her mother she knows that she’s happily raising a child with Zevulun. Facing down such stark, living proof of her betrayal may very well send Riesling over the edge. She’s never harmed a child before, but she wouldn’t be above trying to rip Daire’s throat out and dumping whatever half-sibling her mother and her former lover wound up with back in the Prairie.

Starscream, though, is a close second. They’d met when she was still angry, lost and hurting and so forlorn that any attention seemed like good attention. And he was handsome, barbed words and intelligent eyes; the opposite of Zevulun in every way. He was a taste of home, the deception and barely-concealed hatred she’d seen right through (because it was like staring in a mirror). He’d been a distraction - an excuse to hurt herself, if she was being honest.

Riesling rarely is, though. Even in her own mind, with no one else around to hear.

He takes a few steps forward, and Riesling shifts back warily. Airen has lifted her head, keyed in to whatever interaction she thinks she’s missing out on. She takes a few steps forward and Riesling whips her head around, ears pinned as she lets out an annoyed little snort, indicating that her daughter needs to stay back. For once in her young life Airen actually listens. She shifts so that Riesling and Starscream are still in her eyeline, but she lowers her head back to the lush grasses of the Meadow and does a poor job of pretending to graze.

Daughter sorted, Riesling turns back to the stallion. “What do you want?” she manages to bite out. They’re alone - if ever there was a time for that annoying draft who likes to haunt her steps to show up, this would be it. Having Airen here, faced with a stallion who has equal claim and probably some sort of sway over here, and standing alone has Riesling wrong-footed. That only serves to make her angrier, and her ears do not leave her inky mane as she waits to see just what Starscream has to say for himself.