“There was a snow storm, I got lost.” She admitted with no small measure of embarrassment. How she had gotten so mixed up she really didn’t know. After a couple days of wandering in a white out it had lifted and she had no idea which direction she had come from. She wasn’t entirely sure if she had chosen wrong or right – she had left Nocturne but found him.

Really, it was lucky she hadn’t perished in the storm – lucky she had found shelter and not frozen like many of the animals she had discovered on her way. But Aly did not think of it like that – she didn’t understand the danger she had been in.

Story of her life.

“Iona’s back there with Arty and the rest.” Her absence weight on Aly’s heart every day, as did their son’s. “I wish she were here.” Perhaps not right at that moment - but in Helovia. Her sister would like it here.

She didn’t know why it was enough, the soft touch of his muzzle against her skin, but it was. By all reason she should long for more – but more what? She longed for little and what she did long for, she had faith they might reach it eventually.

She kept more fears than longings next to her heart.

Fear that she wasn’t enough for him.

How could she be, after all? She was naught but sunlight and earth, no more complex than a laugh. He was darkness and stars - distant and comforting, for fire alive in the coldness of space, and infinitely beautiful.

The doubts were easily avoided but that did not mean they weren’t present.

She closed her eyes and leaned softly into his touch, forgetting for a moment everything else. “I missed you so much.” It was a whisper, words that she would say instead of others she suddenly felt too frightened of. Felt, them, yes – and when did she become the mare that was afraid to speak of what she was feeling?

When she met him. When this started. Not that it was his fault – oh no. She just had something to lose from speaking openly.

But her confession, small as it was, reminded her of how much she had missed him. Now she turns to him, adding distance between them. Not much, just so that they weren’t touching. There was a smile still, sad and hopeful, as she searched him. “Were you planning on coming back?” To Nocturne, to her. He had left before the storm, she remembered. One day he was there and the next he was gone. “You didn’t even say goodbye.” It was not an accusation, just a fact they both already knew.