Keeper-
Keeper has kept to the inner basin as of late, exploring amongst the trees and the lakeside but every so often, she climbs higher and scouts the mountain peaks. What she finds is brazen cliffs that offer dizziness and excitement just from looking out over so much land so far below. She finds rams that lock their curling horns together over females, listens to their thunderous clashes and waits to see who emerges as the victor, proud in his strut over the stone ledges.
It is not common for her to be up this high in the dark. She trusts the trails that she takes to see her down safely from the heights but she feels like she might have tarried up a little too long. Rumor has it though, the best clover patches are up here and she likes a little clover snack at times. But she never did find the clover. She heard instead, a name cried out into the dark and it was not her name - none of them know her, but the pain in that primitive sound struck a chord in her.
She raised her pale dun head to the mountain air and sniffed long and loud until she had obtained the scent of the one who had cried out. It mixed with clover and she felt an answering grumble in her stomach but she couldn’t think of eating just now, there was something more important happening here. Something Keeper knew nothing about and that, to her, seemed a little like a secret and as everyone is learning - Keeper likes her secrets. Her pace does not change - she might be learning these slopes but they can still break her neck in the dead of night.
Soon though, she is close enough to smell more things.
Things like sweat and nervousness because even that has a smell to it, acrid and almost offensive enough to pull a snort from the nostrils. Even the pain has a smell to it. Then there is the scent of another mare; a rich wild scent that Keeper instantly takes a shine to. She can smell herbs mixed in with the clover, like skullcap and then catnip both. Each is a good relaxant, meant to calm though she is uncertain why the situation calls for such as that. Granted, Keeper is unaware as she comes amongst them but not close enough to cause much of a disturbance besides a small ripple in the pool of their gathering, that a birth is occurring.
The painted mare on the ground looks to be in pain and the red mare alternates between singing and nuzzling at the painted mare’s side. Is she sick? That would explain the skullcap to relax her but her side looks distended which isn’t good. Sickness like that kills. Little does she know it’s not a sickness, not quite like that but rather, a foal stuck inside her mother too stubborn to just slide right on out like she ought to. But then, she smells a wolf and her ears pin back in consternation as the brown beast pokes her shoulders and head through the bracken ringing them all and drops catnip there like an offering.
Curiouser and curiouser, she thinks. Two mares and a wolf helping them, what in the world has she stumbled upon? Too late to leave now though, she is entranced by concern as much as she is by curiosity for what is taking place in the clover underneath them. Something secretive, she thinks, to be occurring at dark and instinct tries to tell her that this is what mares do and mares know best so leave it to them but she ignores her instinct, just this once to nicker low and soft to the strange trio she found here. Her black eyes rove between the skullcap and the catnip and all she comments on is this, “Both might be too much for her.”
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless