Duir had noticed all the things that I had not.

Mordecai had not been absent at the festival because she disliked fun and celebrations; she had been disguising herself with scarcity. If I’d seen her, I’d have known. If Duir had any ounce of respect for the man I would like to be, rather than just disdain for who I actively am, he may also have told me of the roundness he’d noted in her sides, and how it seemed to grow broader the less and less often she was to be seen in the shade of the Basin’s pine forests.

The season, perhaps, had led me to believe that our union could not possibly have led to this outcome, and, so, when I follow my companion down the dead thistle lined game trails, his mind eagerly gesturing and nagging at mine to keep up and come along, I’m not sure what to expect. Per usual, I have my feelings mostly sealed up here, because I have memories in meadow that hurt, more than they appeal to me, anymore. It’s a good thing, too.

At first, I think it’s a doe and her late fawn, which you sometimes come across out here. The barely perceivable, trampled down ring is the same, and the smell is definitely that of birth, but, as we approach, they do not dart away once the breeze carries my smell over, and they are quite dark… and familiar.

Mordecai rises from the grass, and I stop. Every fiber in my being wants what I’m seeing to not be real, but it is, and, with a slow, steady loss of every molecule of air in my lungs, I stare, for seconds that feel like hours.

Another set of wings rises from the grass, small, damp, terrifying, perfect…

My heart slams riotously against my ribs. A breath is taken, one that hurts, one that is slow, and steady, because I’m not ready… Not yet…

Our dark angel screams and falls to the earth. The spell upon me is broken at that piteous sound, and I move, quickly, appearing from where I’d cowardly stalled, and quietly prayed the foal would not be gilded, would not be marked across her eye with gold, would not be mine…

"Why? Why didn’t you tell me, Mordecai?" I quietly demand, no sooner than I appear, because it’s all so fucked up, and she’s broken, this child. She needs a healer, and we’re way out here, in the middle of no where, miles from the places I know to find one readily. She’s broken. She’s…

I’m really mad, and overall feeling a bit sick inside. I keep running my eyes across her, how she’s dark and golden, and winged. More than I had wanted to run when Gwyn had come into the world, I want to hurl my rage into Mordecai’s face and flee, going wherever I can to find someone else to tend to this disaster.

I should have known. I should never have kept going with her, like I did. I should have let her keep walking, that day in the desert…

"She needs a healer," I tactfully decide on, the emotional overtone that had riddled my first statement now chilled, layered in ice, my golden eyes moving away from the mare here who hurts me, for the one who has done nothing of her own free will, but hurts me no less. Her legs, I notice, are shaped strangely, and I reach down with my muzzle to touch the soft, small feathers sprouting from the slope of her shoulders, letting more and more frost slake itself over the small death occurring inside myself. When I look back to Mordecai, I want my façade to stick. I want the mask to be cold, and indifferent. She’ll have no more power over me. Not anymore than she already has. Unfortunately, as I tell the Laurelin when he gets on my nerves, I’m not truly my mother’s son; my masks are flimsy, and slowly chip away, the more I ask of them. "Some of the best in Helovia live in the Basin. Guess I’ll go ask that tree over there for some help, though, seeing as we’re in fucking no where, but, what do I know?"

Nothing. I'm not even allowed to know when I've impregnated people.