Sleepy Fox Hollow rhyolite

Her withers shuddered as if bitten by flies; she swished her tail as if to slap them away. She had no other real way of appropriately expressing how she felt without doing something that might sour him and send him away. The urge to do just that was fresh and tempting- but the memory of Cedar’s anguished screams reminded her of their reality. 

They needed him. If not him, then some other stallion- and none had come to claim them in his absence.

She felt jilted when he mentioned only Selenia and Silverbirch; she had to wonder what other stallions Maplesmoke had come across, and if perchance some of them had been her own sons. Naturally, they wouldn’t be interested in stealing their mother back, but the buckskin and her daughter? Absolutely.

Next time you fight off stallions, She breathed, You do it in front of us. I don’t care how many of them line up, and draw you into stupid pissing- sorry Selenia- she lowered her voice. Pissing matches and brawls- you do not leave your herd alone for months! She said with an emphatic flattening of her ears. Her voice quieted a bit. Where do you think they went? Without a herd stallion? She asked rhetorically. It’s just us. We’re all that’s left. She felt weary, just admitting it. She paused. There may be two more next Spring. Her gaze lifted. He might be more inclined to stay now, that his lineage had been secured.