Can't let you go (birthing) - Besra, Minette, any

[Leck]

Leck watched the laboring mare and his mother from a distance. The colt, once a glowing palomino, was fading, becoming pale and wraithlike. The boy wasn’t sad to see the fur go, it felt right. His horns too, were changing. They didn’t itch anymore, and they had become tall and towering, wickedly sharp above his childlike head and stony eyes.

Leck’s lip pulled up into a sneer. There was to be another foal in the Mountain, and a filly. Already he knew it was no sister of his. It didn’t smell like Red Eye. The colt was old enough to know his father’s name, to know that they all simpered, “Gryffen.” He still thought Red Eye was more appropriate. 


Leck briefly wondered if his father would have killed the filly, had it been a colt not his own. Leck would have. It was only practical, to rid yourself of another man’s bastard colt. Then Leck wondered if Gryffen would kill the filly anyways, for being a child born to another man in his home. That would be rather wasteful. Still, not unwarranted perhaps, if you had girls to spare.

The pale yearling shrugged. It made no difference to him either way. He needed no company, and he longed for no company less than that of his parents. He accepted Red Eye, for he was powerful, and his mentoring would certainly prove useful to Leck, and he accepted mother, for she had done much for him. She had given him birth, and suffered greatly on his part. It didn’t endear her to him, but he she would admit that she had her purpose, and a slight, grudging resect was owed her.

In honor of that debt owed, and because he was bored out of his skull, Leck got a little closer to the trio. He stopped near his mother, and snarled one of his rare, fleeting sentences.

“Who are they? The child is not Gryffen’s.” Leck wasn’t sure if his words were a threat. They sounded like a threat, but they passed through his lips with a great deal of apathy. There was, however, the slightest tinge of curiosity, mingling with the apathy.