There’s something about the way that Killdare looks at Dacia that makes Astri almost sorry her children didn’t have a strong male influence in their lives. But then she thinks how she can’t even fathom using the word father, and she decides it’s better this way. They were her’s, wholly, of her flesh and blood and born of her pain and agony. She’d be damned if she’d let any regular stallion try to tell her how to rear her offspring. Dacia has taken to padding around, huffing here and there, flicking her bright tail to and fro. She was adorable, really, and Astri concedes that she’d be happy to stop having children now. One perfect son and now one perfect little daughter.
Killdare snaps her out of her haze, and she turns back to peer at him with a soft laugh. “The same thing you’d do with a boy.” She mulls over her own birth - not thinking that it would be an appropriate story to parallel with this situation. She’d been abandoned by her mother in the den, and no one had come to rescue her. Nature had shaped her - not nurture. “Honestly, Killdare, it depends on her personality. I have a feeling Dacia won’t be ‘clingy’ just by looking at her - but not two foals are the same.”
She narrows her gaze, contemplating his situation. It was Killdare, after all, it shouldn’t surprise her that he wouldn’t know the first thing about having a daughter. “If you’re worried about her turning into a soft-bellied sweetheart, then my advice to you is just to encourage her to be strong-willed, strong-minded. Teach her that she doesn’t need anyone to satisfy her - even if that someone is you.” Her head tilts, one ear flicking behind her to listen to her daughter rustle in the brush. “Keep in mind though, she is a child. She’s lucky to have you and her dam. Give her time - maybe she’ll grow out of it. After all, if I know anything about children, it’s that they want to live up to their parents expectations.”
Her daughter returns, brown stick awkwardly held in her mouth. Dacia’s elegant little nose begins to change, slowly becoming the same color of the stick. The brown bleeds all the way up to her ears and she shakes her head. Astri laughs, nose bumping against Dacia’s cheek before she throws her own question back at the stallion. “What do you think? Color-changing or mimicry?”
astri