When he says the name of his son, Agetta thinks it’s a joke for a moment - but doesn’t laugh. She just listens. It’s a story she knows well enough, being left behind with a foal to raise without a father. If she’s surprised that he had a child with another stallion she doesn’t show it - she knows the workings of Beqanna (even if she does not know that one of her own children has two mothers and no father).
She can sympathize, though. “I raised most of my foals on my own as well. Many of them… they weren’t created out of anything close to love and their fathers did not stick around.” She can’t bring herself to admit this failing of hers in any more of a direct manner, the secret she’s kept about how often she had failed to escape or fight off someone who had come to take something she was unwilling to give. The guilt she feels when she thinks about more than a few of her children, knowing they were created from hate and knowing she never could quite get over that beginning.
Agetta loves all of her children deeply, but she favours the ones that do not remind her of how often she has failed.
Did she let the others slip away from her, she wonders. Putting space between herself and her sins?
She finds a smile again when he agrees about how they'll do better this time and she inhales deeply, as though a cleansing breath will wash away all the dark thoughts. Agetta reaches out to nudge Garbage gently on his sleek neck when she speaks again. “I think though, if we’re to have any more foals, we’ll decide on some cheerier names together.” It’s a gentle way to tease him about the trend that has started in his family - and belated she is startled at how easy it is to think of a future where they are together. Where a larger family is a possibility for them. Guilt floods her and she looks away, off to where Mazikeen has paused to watch a squirrel chittering in a tree.
Agetta keeps delaying the day when she will have to confront the truth that she is in love with two different stallions - neither of which she has been completely honest with. Will she leave Garbage and go find Plume to snuggle beneath his wing? She’s not quite so bold as that, so she’ll continue to avoid both the thoughts and the confrontations.
@[garbage]