The Meadow is quiet, but it’s calm isn’t reassuring today.

It’s probably because I know what will come to pass this afternoon; an hour, maybe two, I cannot tell exactly when. Winter is here, and I fit in like a dream - once again. My unending whiteness draws the eye of some, representing snow not yet fallen, or perhaps a purity they’d like to achieve. They don’t know how messed up I feel sometimes, they don’t know how hard it is to keep a straight and neutral face in trying times, to put on a motherly smile and know that some of my (figurative) children cannot be steered back to what they once were, and I can only love them in return of their sometimes harsh actions - love them and hope it gets better. I’ll be there when you break down, that smile says. I’ll be waiting for you and I won’t judge.

Not judging is very hard to do though. I must be careful not to judge my friends, or my former friends, acquaintances. I don’t know everything, even if I now know more than I knew before - but I don’t know the past, and the future comes in flashes of certainty that I feel more than I see it.

I must be here today, and I must intervene for the good of the future.
But why, and how, remains a mystery for now.

And so I wander the dried grasses, aimlessly and purposefully at the same time. I greet mothers with near-yearling children, I nod at the occasional stallion coming here for a bite of the green-ish stalks before the first snowfall. Hyaline, I muse to myself, must be covered already. The passes may be filled already - has it really already been a year since I last went there? All I remember of last year seems to be passing in a blur; and I know I haven’t really, actually visited, for a long while. Too long. Stuck in the Cove and the Field, set on finding people to help hide from the plague, now set on keeping the peace in the realm that is dear to me, but finding it near impossible to do so.

I wander, and I wonder.

I may have walked past her about three times earlier, but I hadn’t noticed her significance. I know why, when it does hit me; when I turn around to regard the pregnant bay with fuchsia points, I see that it is the arrival of the horned dappled grey stallion that has triggered my intuition. Like a deja vu, I watch them from afar for a while, and pretend to be interested in feeding myself more than in them. My time is not now.

Others look up to them once in a while, but like me they don’t feel like they should come in between. I fold my wings and dim them, though letting them disappear fully is something that I haven’t been consciously able to do since the one time on the ice pixie’s mountain.

I listen. I hope they can sort it themselves.

”I am not coming with you.” The girl, a voice laced with emotion: anger more than sadness, I notice.

”It is where you belong!” The guy. Equally upset.

”I don’t belong in your fucking whore-house!”

That turns a few necks. Faces are scowling, but the couple only stares at each other in fury and the cycle continues.

”It’s the safest place for the baby.”

”You mean it’s the safest place for you.”

”For God’s sake, Ellia- aah! Dammit!”

A sound - I look up and see her fanged teeth drip with his blood, and I hurry forward, cursing inside. Am I too late already, to fix this?

The pretty mare (spoiled by her scowl) turns away to leave, but she nearly bumps into me. I have to say something. ”Hey, don’t go yet.” It slips my mind without thinking, and now she glares at me. I manage a slightly weak smile in return, and sidestep to talk to the stallion, whose head is lowered to expose his horns to us, and glaring also - but more at her than at me.

Diplomacy has been my only weapon for years. I can do this.

Can I?

Looking from one to the other, I scowl myself. ”You’re making fools of yourselves.” Both of them, they are. As one, they seem to turn against me, and though inwardly I smile because a common enemy can bring people together, I also know that it won’t be enough, won’t last long enough, probably not even until their son is born.

Unperturbed, I continue as if they haven’t just both sided with one another to attack me in stead of the other. ”As far as I understand it, you,” the guy I face, ”want to see your child, and you,” the girl then, “don’t want to face his other mares in a herd.” I smile at them. I don’t know their past, but I can see what their future will be like if nobody steers them back to one another in some way.

The mare rolls her eyes, again threatening to leave, but before she can do so I continue in a softer tone. ”But you both forget that this fighting of yours will mostly harm the little one.”

I don’t need any magic or intuition or whatever you want to call it, to know that this is true; they don’t need it either.

It is now that I have their actual, full attention. I look at them, smile wearily. I’ve seen it often enough. ”The compromise,” I tell them, ”would be to live close by, and visit long and frequently. And more importantly - once weaned, the foal should be allowed to choose what they want. And you’ll just have to tolerate one another’s existence for the sake of your shared little love.” Looking to the bite mark pointedly, I then turn back to them. ”Good day.”

They’re silent for a long while, while I take my leave. They’ll have a lot to think about. Compromising always is a solution that nobody is fully, one hundred percent happy with, but it also comes with the satisfaction that the other party didn’t get what they want either. Both can live with it - for the sake of the third.

For the sake of a common love.