Twinge has kept herself at a distance long enough. Since her disagreement with Bacardi over Burn, the red and white mare cannot help but feel the space that has grown between her and Bacardi. The forest was secure, enclosed, and safe in a way that she had never known before their relocation. Twinge was born on the open, sandy dunes of Salem’s desert and even when she later decided to join Bacardi as part of his herd in the Bay, the mare had known open fields and meadows of permafrost. The forest was her first experience with density and for a time, the closeness felt almost suffocating. Yet in time, Twinge came to love the shadows and thick canopy the forest provided. Curiosity drove her to explore, and the fight with Bacardi made her desire grow bolder….stronger. In anger and frustration, the copper and white woman left the closely knit herd and drove herself away, exploring the furthest reaches Luthien had to offer and beyond. For a time, Burn found her and joined her quest with a desire to explore himself. It did not take long, however, for the forest-borne stallion to miss the familiar scents and sights of home. He left her to her thoughts and wanderings, threatening to return with Bacardi to track her down and drag her home by her tail hairs if necessary. The idea had brought about a sort of sad smile and an equally dismissing chuckle from her lips. Not because she doubted her son, but because she doubted Bacardi. For the first time in her life, the mare wondered if he even missed her. Had he noticed her absence? Had he searched? In the time she wandered Luthien he had not but that did not mean now things had not changed. It had for her. She missed the nights when she would curl up into the warm security of his embrace. She missed the soft melody of his slumbering snores that seemed to create the melody for which the crickets played their lullabies. She missed the adoration and amusement that would alight his auburn eyes as they shared a private joke or watched the antics of the foals of the herd. Mostly, she missed him. He was home, her beacon in the dark and guiding light. It is only her prolonged absence from his side that causes her to realize just how petty she had been to let such an argument dismantle her in this manner. How childish.

And so she abandoned her fruitless search for nothing in particular and returned to Luthien and the heart and soul she had abandoned in the name of stubborn anger

The rolling waves cast her ashore with ease, leaving her dripping wet and even more ashamed as her auburn gaze lifts to meet the familiar birch and oaks. Ocean zephyrs tug at the water-logged ends of her mane as Twinge wades free of the foaming sea and onto the sun-warmed red sands. Luthien is just as she remembers it, the tall paper birch stands already changing its color to the multifaceted layers of red, orange, and yellow. Autumn was in full swing, the exposed grasses yellowing and dried but she knew without a doubt green growth could still be found in the shadows that remained of the forest. Lazily she strolls down one of the well-worn pathways, pausing here and there to nose beneath the layer of leaf litter to graze upon the tender, green shoots of grass. Hunger did not weigh upon her but it was the best excuse she had at the moment to delay her meeting with Bacardi. At least, until she knew exactly what to say.