—And then a tumult of words fall out of brother calf’s mouth; they are spoken so quickly, more quickly than Esi has ever heard brother-calf speak. Her white-rimmed ear flutes toward him, pale gaze darting towards the strong curve of his jaw, before flashing back to see their dam’s response. At Arakh’s pain and pleading, her own unease grows; small hooves shifting in the snow as her feathers raise and ruffle, nearly vibrating with nervous energy.
At Mai’s immediate denial of brother’s request, her teeth begin to grind and work against each other quickly, breaths growing shallow at the conflict that suddenly face the pair of bull-horned weanlings… But then something changes—Mai looks towards Zhokwa khal, her face clouded and softened in emotions that are at once too complex and all too simple for the little filly’s strange mind to understand.
And then, “I… will visit you every day,” and again Arakh’s broad shoulder holds the tears of his family. Slowly, hesitantly, the strangling filly shuffles forward—though she cannot change it, she understands that her dam’s relationship with her had been a trying one. She was not an easily handled or understood foal.
But, still, moved by the quiet pain her mother’s voice, her tiny hooves crunch in the snow; the slender snip of her smooth muzzle (free of whiskers, she had pulled those out) reaches out to gently touch Nyx’s grey cheek. “Miss you,” was her soft, quiet bleat as her pale, luminous grey eyes south the electric blues of her dam’s.