I knew a lot of things. I knew them then and I know them now. The second most important thing I knew was to mind my own business. The most important memory, though, that I held to my breast, was the memory of how much it hurt to not be the mother that you thought you would be. I'll never forget that pain. It's impossible.

I heard the screams from not too far off and knew immediately the signs. How many times had I screamed like that, how many hours had I spent heaving on the ground and in the sky, in some sort of in between heaven and hell? Hadn't I been beaten while birthing, hadn't I been forced upon and made to feel worthless? These were the cries of a mother about to be made, and the cries of one without comfort. I couldn't bear to let her be alone, I couldn't let myself walk away from that. As much as I knew better as much as I knew to mind my own business... I couldn't walk away from those screams.

So instead I ran, long hair trailing through frost covered hay and catching and tearing in twigs. Chunks of blue were lost to the wilds but I fought the irritant pain, not stopping until I found myself at the source of the sound. I needed to help, I needed to be there.

The only problem was, it was too late. And not only was I too late to help, to save, but two other stallions had muscled their way into the situation. Immediately perceiving them as a threat I shoved my way between the pegasi and the mare, my teeth bared and a harsh whinny coming from between my lips.

They offered comfort, they offered their very presence, and all of it was wrong. When I looked at that mare I saw myself, the mare I had been years before when my first child had been born still. The live colt was full of life, still wet and only haphazardly cleaned by his numb mother, but she seemed focused only on the dead.

So when the green-hued stallion spoke, his advice was not unsurprising. Be thankful for what you have, he seemed to suggest. There will be enough time to grieve for the fallen... but what a fool he was.

Without leaving a second for the mare to speak for herself, I lunged for the stallion and snapped my teeth, not touching but threatening. Back off, my every movement said. "What do you know?" I shouted at him, my tail raised and my ears pinned. My eyes burned with unforgiving hatred, with pure pain. "There is never enough time to grieve. There is never enough time. Do you presume to know the pain of a child who has died before he has breathed?" My chest heaved, filled with the air of my lost children, the lives time had stolen. "You say he has fallen--how can he if his mother never taught him to stand?"

I wanted to beat his insolence to the earth, to shred his chest with all my horns and send him reeling. Would blood teach him to shut his fat and uninformed face? I snapped my gaze briefly to the quieter, ember-like boy, but gave him no verbal warning. Let the reprimand of Ilios serve well enough.

Wordlessly I turned from them, my flowing tail snapping in their faces before falling over the living colt like a blanket. I moved towards the mare, this mother half lost, and offered her the kindness of my touch--a long, dark neck to rest over the one she bore herself.

"This is love," I whispered to her in the emptiness of this hurt. I widened my blue eyes and beckoned the child with them before looking back to the corpse of his brother. "It is the purest and most painful thing you will ever feel, and you will never forget it, not for as long as you live." My voice, a choking whisper, was like a kiss upon her ear. "I'm so sorry you have to know it, my child."

Even now, I'm not sure who I was speaking to, then.

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