The painted stallion she had once envisioned as her whole future moved to stand between her and the black behemoth that threatened them and her heart gave another complicated lurch in her chest. Where had he been all this time? Why had he left them? And what gave him the right to stand here now, as if he hadn't cast her away again. Her gaze locked onto his back as the rippling muscles of his haunches filled most of her view, blocking out the snarling void on the other side of the clearing.

Sigurdr spoke, offering a truce that threatened to undo Hymn again and a soft sob escaped her, even while she continued to hasten Promise backward. No matter what her heart wanted, Promise was her priority. Promise was her everything, the only thing that had always been there for her, had never left her. I. Do. Not. Prey. Upon. Foals. The beasts snarled proclamation did nothing to settle Hymn's heart, nor to slow her pace.

He moved abruptly then, shifting off in a direction Hymn hadn't expected, somehow circumventing Sigurdr between them to pass closest to Promise. Her painted mother - teeth uncharacteristically bared - hurried ot place her body between the black beast and her baby, because despite what Lucifer had claimed, he had given her no reason to trust him. Still it wasn't fast enough to save Promise from the confusing statement he'd offered to her. The girl, not really understanding the context given that she had been hastened backward by her mother, away from the whole scene, only shrank back from him.

Together the two of them backed further into the greenery, pressed together like two halves of a whole. Promise's eyes followed the black beast into the greenery with her little brow furrowed in confusion, but Hymn's eyes locked back onto Sigurdr, waiting to see if he would disappear again or come back.