In the sea, time feels different. There is less rush, less hurry. The only pressure is that of the tide, and that gentle pull that can be banished with a single flick of his dark tail.

Ivar had entered the water at the close of autumn (on the day that Isobell called to him) and he has not emerged since. The kelpie knows that time has passed (he need only look at Isobell’s belly to know that). The snow is thick on the land, blanketing the familiar hills in a cloak of white. Here and there the land is clear, in areas where the hot springs heat the land, but he is not looking for warmth. He is looking for Heda, and he finds a bluff from where to look for her.

The words he must say to her are spinning through his head. It will not be pleasant, the piebald stallion knows, but it is necessary.

He has them almost sorted when a shadow crosses overhead. Ivar looks up, and there is the familiar silhouette of his consort against the blue winter sky. She lands and prances toward him with a brilliant smile, and he is struck again by how very beautiful she is. She will find a replacement for him easily; anyone would be lucky to be chosen by the navy winged pegasus. Ivar had been lucky, he knows, fortunate beyond measure and gifted beyond what he truly deserved with the buckskin mare.

She presses her head against him and he inhales her familiar scent. It is too easy to wrap his neck around her, to pull her tightly to him despite knowing that he should push her away – make this easier for her.

“Heda, I…” I’m leaving. Leaving you. There is someone else. The words (his explanation) are cut short, little more than her name falling from his lips before the mare makes her announcement.

Whatever he had been ready to say, ready to do…it all falls away. His world shrinks in an instant, hyperfocused on the rounding of the buttermilk yellow barrel.

“A child,” he breathes, stepping closer without realizing it. His pale muzzle touches her belly gently, the soft give of her pelt an unfamiliar sensation. He knows how his child feels cradled in scales – this is different. This is his too, but it is not Minnow. The mare carrying it is not a kelpie; she is not his mate. This should not be possible (he thought he knew why they had never before been successful), and yet it is.

“Heda, I…” The words are there, but they are tied down, weighed down by the flurry of emotions that he has only even begun to understand. Ivar is glad that he does not have to look at Heda, and instead can focus on tracing the curve of her belly with his muzzle. “I don’t know what to say. A child. Our child.”


king of loess
minimal smoky grullo tobiano | equus kelpus

Ivar has always been good at denial.

Recognizing it in himself has been difficult, but seeing it in others has aways come much more easily.

The buckskin mare is in denial.

Ivar has been away for months. The king of Loess has been absent, and the only stirrings in the small land have been the lives of his little herd of mares. The women he had gathered to amuse him, to pass the time. Yet he has not been with them, but rather away.

The fishy smell to Ivar is his natural odor - he is a sea creature before all else.

He’d hidden that from Heda of course; he has presented himself as nothing more than what he seems. She knows him to be a kelpie, but has never truly understood what it meant. The buckskin mare is still smiling, even as he hesitates over what she knows should be joyous news.

She does not want to accept what she knows is coming, which only makes what he has to say all the more difficult. His breath catches in his throat and he is grateful he does not have to meet her gaze.

“We’ve been trying so long,” he says, “I’d given up hope.”

“But…But it doesn’t change what I came back to tell you.” Or perhaps it does, he thinks, even as the words spill forth. “I can’t stay in Loess anymore. I’m leaving. I’m going with Isobell.”

“I’ve asked Castile to stay here. He’s promised to help you. I’m sure he’ll do the same for…for our child.”

Only then does he pull away, his dark eyes meeting Heda’s familiar gaze. He knows what he expects to see, but knowing does not make it any easier.


king of loess
minimal smoky grullo tobiano | equus kelpus