He isn't expecting it. He has a horse with an open gate. He doesn't know where the halls twist. He isn't anymore near her first thoughts in this second.




And what he'll find when he does, might be an image he should keep tucked in his book for all time, of things Marian does not do, does not show.



A woman, wrapped in the colors of a shadow, with almost every inch of herself plastered against a stall door, as though by her force of will she might go straight through, head driven against the cheek and jowl of a white mare, shoulder tucked under her great head.

Having still not made a single sound, even for how tight her face in pressed, and how one of her arms is thrown about as far as she can reach over the stall door, across the neck and white-beige hair. Not even her breath races in this silence, as she breathes one of the most known scents in her world.



Not once has Milliways seen her throw herself at any horse, even her own.






Or maybe, it is simply the other way around. Maybe it is Milliways, in five years, that has never once seen Marian with her horse.