A call unlike any he had ever heard stirred him from his rest. It was a pained cry, the call of someone in agony, but nothing in the vicinity smelled of blood or pre-death. Blinking in the burnished orange glow of sunset Mauja tried to pinpoint the sound. Whatever - whoever - it was, it was a large chance that it was someone in his herd. And.. if something had happened... He had to know. Had to be there. Had to help. Growling, he clawed his way from sleep and shook his large head, horn glowing in the dying light. With sleep still heavy and cold in his muscles Mauja took it at an easy trot at first, desperate to reach the source yet not willing to make himself useless by pulling a muscle. The closer he came, shifting through the trees and dragging the mist with him, the more the scent became one he knew: birth. Was it Lotus, then, giving their child life? Or Seiren, with her unknown father? They had seemed to be about as far in as the other, so it could be either, and the to him alien scent made him want to not breathe. It was hard to peg it as either one mare or the other, and it wasn't until he came into view that he knew for sure.

Seiren - her shady, willowy form covered in drying sweat. She looked well, though, touching the obsidian form of her daughter. Mauja's eyes roved onto it, the finely shaped head and the protruding horn, down her neck and onto her shoulders... A mass of black, white and red feathers greeted him, slowing his trot to a hesitant, morbidly curious walk. For a few seconds all he felt was wonder, amazement at how something so thoroughly malformed had been placed in Seiren's womb and birthed on his very lands - but then a deep, rolling rage unfolded itself in his gut. Seiren. A filly. Wings. "Serien," he hissed, something icy in his voice. "What is the meaning of this?!" There was no mistaking the cold, hard edge of anger in his eyes, the lines of tension under his skin marking his taut muscles - what the hell had happened here? Why had Seiren given birth to an otherwise beautiful daughter, only for it to have wings? Was it just a cruel, sick twist of fate?

He brought his smoldering eyes onto hers, staring fearlessly into those dark, obscured pools. He wanted an explanation, and a damn good one, and he wanted it now.