Her mother's name is sharp against her skin like a fine blade. It cuts the scar tissue that is her heart, sewn with thick black cord. The amber of her eyes shoot to the face of the liver chestnut stallion and grip him. Her mother's name on a stranger's lips chills her bones and causes a shiver.

October. The gentle creature. The soft hearted. Oak still remained severely protective of the mustang woman though October had been gone for some time. Oak imagined her among the wildflowers of a far off place and finally awarded with her long deserved happiness (Oak blamed herself when she was younger for the buckskin mare's distress, never anyone else).

Though he intended to cut her off, Oak finds her own stopping point as she looks to the stallion. The small frost cloud of words that was nearly as delicate as her mother. Manhattan says he misses her and another strike knocks her backward. Confusion crosses the chiseled features, contorting and brows falling low as she scrutinizes him but she does not act irrationally. Instead she takes his words, analyses them and returns with her own findings. "Me too." It's all she can say but her body releases from it's tension that had been building on her shoulders, heavier and heavier.

A sigh fills the cracks in her voice, the confusion. Oak looks to meet his face again and she knows...why would he say her mother's name? Missing her?

"Welcome home, dad." The pale mare, the wildling, moves to embrace the man (though rigid and awkward at first) she softens against him, her neck around his.