ooc: backdated to winter

Certainty, it turned out, was a powerful thing.

Her first weeks in the Lagoon, Sabah had been dogged by its antithesis. What would her life look like now, as a mere trinket of a bachelor gang? Was her son headed down a dark path as one of their number? Would Zion ever come for her? Whose child did she carry? Would Acid ever let slip the shameful bargain she'd made to be here? Would she ever know safety, freedom, or happiness again?

But in time, as the secret within her belly germinated, one thing became indisputable: she would not raise a child in this hellhole. As much of a relief as it had been to be reunited with her grown son, he had chosen this life, not her, and she saw now what his quest for self-determination had cost him. When she looked at his face, she saw the sweet little colt she had raised being eclipsed by a troubled, hard-eyed stallion, one more lost than ever. She would not allow another child to be groomed by these bachelor men.

She would figure out exactly how later.

And so as winter tightened its grip on the land, Sabah felt herself rivitalized by the new resolve within her. Where once she had cringed among the trees, stealing quiet moments to weep while her body drooped from the exhaustion of constant hypervigilance, now she stood taller, levelling her mismatched gaze with any who looked her way. There was no shortage of pinned ears on her part for the bachelors who did so, but for one horse in particular, whom she'd shamefully avoided for the duration of their shared captivity, Sabah was finding more smiles to offer.

That horse was Mercy.

The pinto mare had been brought here by Abraxas a short time before Sabah had arrived, and so far Sabah had had little but brief cordiality to offer her. She watched the mare plenty, though, as well as her interactions with Brax: enough to gather that not all was well between them. Mercy's obvious misery struck a chord of empathy within Sabah. She knew the pain that was trapped in Mercy's chest, for she carried it within her own. Every iota of fear, anger and anguish Sabah felt at being trapped in this gang of stinking men was reflected in Mercy's face. It was past time that they connected—especially because Sabah suspected that Mercy carried the same little secret within her belly that she did. And if her suspicions were correct, that meant Mercy carried her first grandchild.

They were family. It was time for them to start acting like it.

She approached the pinto mare on a day the ground was slick with sleet that had melted and refrozen overnight. Brax was a stone's-throw away, his back to them as he grazed in contemplative silence, and Acid was mercifully nowhere to be seen. Sabah picked her way up the little ridge that led to a copse of naked trees, one lone evergreen among them providing a break from the wind, where Mercy stood alone. Her body language did not seem receptive to company, but no change would come between them if Sabah did not at least try.

She nickered in greeting when she was close enough, offering a tenative smile to the younger mare as the wind thrashed her bicolored mane against her neck. "Hello, Mercy. I hope you don't mind some company; it was chilly out there in the open."