Meadow

The voice that greeted her was deep, and as the stranger shifted to make room for her beneath the boughs, Sylvi saw that her new companion was a stallion with a coat as black and luminous as the night sky overhead. He was taller than her, and she judged him to be a little older, but not old by any means. Experience should have taught her to fear strange men in the night, but—if only because the solitude of her own thoughts was currently even more unbearable—Sylvi could not find it in her to be scared of this man. Something about him exuded calm, and his voice was like the rumbling lullaby of distant thunder.

After offering her muzzle in greeting, Sylvi settled beside him, far enough to be polite but close enough she could feel the heat emanating from his body. She followed his gaze, lifting her head to take in the spray of stars that winked from behind the naked branches.

"And what are the stars telling you tonight?" she asked, her eyes lighting on the constellations she knew like old friends—the constellations her mother had once taught her to look for, if she was ever lost. An ache thrummed in her chest as she thought of her mother again, the brutal vision of her dream flashing in her mind's eye. Her breath hitched in her throat as the sharp stench of her mother's rot overpowered her nostrils once more. She found herself stepping a little closer to the stallion beside her and focused on his presence instead: the warmth of him, the size of him, the velvet smoothness of his musk enveloping her like a blanket.

Sylvi had never known a father figure. She'd never had a lover, or even a close male friend. Her mother had always taught her to be cautious around stallions—to never give her heart or her body away too freely. That they would use her with no sense of loyalty, and that she would degrade herself by letting them do so. Sylvi had only just met this stallion and did not not so much as know his name, but she found herself wondering if this was it: if this feeling of safety, of sensory domination, was what led mares to doing things against their better judgement.

She breathed deeply, pondering the fact that her mother was dead, and this stallion was not.