I Do Believe

Taliesyn settled easily, one hind hoof cocked. With Isolde keeping watch in the sky, he was comfortable devoting his full attention to the skeptical mare. At her initial question, he chuckled, unbothered. “I stand before you seven years of age. Every stallion will lose a harem or several to a challenger during his lifetime. It’s all part of the process of learning, and part of the way of life.

“To say I’ve gone undefeated in all my sovereign years would be to lie and profess myself untruly magnificent. I’ve only lost ten mares to a challenger, as a four-year-old still getting the hang of it all, but several of them left the winner to return to me after a time with him… Other times, we all decided we wanted someone or something else after a while. It was never with any hard feelings. My last harem understood that I had this quest, and I had a good, strong lieutenant they all approved of to take over in my stead.”

He didn’t speak of the one loss that did haunt him. It hadn’t been to a challenger, or even an amicable parting of ways. Instead, a similar event to the eruption this continent had experienced had struck. He was lucky to escape the landslide. His mares had not been. He’d lost twenty mares, ten of whom had carried his next spring’s get. To be honest… he could only hope their deaths had been quick. He couldn’t bear the notion that they might have lay dying , suffocating under rubble and earth.

There was nothing he could have done. He couldn’t have acted any sooner. The only thing he might have been able to accomplish was to have had his harem elsewhere at the time of the slide, but he only had some say in where the harem went, and he wasn’t about to blame Elouise for the tragedy.

His head tipped thoughtfully at the mare as she remarked that perhaps the young stallion he’d noted was in danger. She was clearly unfamiliar with the notion of horses spending time with wolves. “He never carried the scent of fear on his traces. It’s not unheard of for a horse to live among wolves for a time. My mother was one of those who did. She even fought in one of their wars. They had a big cat among their attackers, however, and she only just managed to throw the beast off. Never did like big cats, even before that.”

He chuckled gently to himself as he remembered his mother’s disgust at her loss in that fight.

At her next direct query, he smiled down at Wangui. “By chance, really. Wangui was once a renowned warlord of her tribe. She was separated in a storm from her troop during a war raid on another tribe, and washed up far from home. Months later, she and I came upon each other and she swore herself to me.”

The lemur coughed as he added, “I had to convince her I was just a mortal beast.”

His great, horned head rose, eyes searching the sky until they found the hawk circling above. “Isolde was also a well-known fighter in her Aerie, until a scandal made her into an outcast. It was a plot to prevent her from gaining leadership. She settled in with me and has been an invaluable friend. Both of them have been.”

He shifted his hooves, eyes scanning the land around them briefly, though Isolde hadn’t shrieked an alarm, before his eyes turned to Kamilah with intensity. “And what brings a well-spoken, poised mare with some bearing, to be alone out here, without her herd?”

Pleasant inquiry lay upon his voice as his eyes roved her form to settle on the marks left by the cat she’d escaped. For all that he was pleasant and good-natured, he wasn’t a fool to her pointed questions. She was feeling out his strengths, and perhaps prone to making judgements too soon. In the long run, to his intentions in life, if she chose another stud, he wasn’t offended. He had many foals out there now. For all his instinctive drive to present the world with more of his get, his stamp was already out there, his bloodline spreading through the world.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think