I think my unicorn is pregernet

COLT

Cowboys ain't easy to love
And they're harder to hold

She smirked at his response, and made a mental note that she'd have to get Chip some extra treats when this was all done. The steady boy wasn't really a lesson horse, but he was handling the sack of potatoes on his back gracefully enough. "Good, that's the best position to be when on a horse," she laughed.

Colt's attention also turned back to the surroundings as they came back to the herd where they'd first met. She settled more into her seat, the buckskin mare beneath her responding in turn as she slowed to a walk, though the pace remained swift, almost like a strut. "Pregnancy and birth aren't easy," she answered him, leaning forward in her saddle to dodge a low branch as they picked through some nearby shrubs and trees. "Even though they'd do it in the wild without help, many don't make it. Hell, still might not even with our help." Sometimes you had to be strong to survive, sometimes you just had to be lucky. "We might find her and see she's not even going to foal tonight after all." Colt shrugged. "We might find her, and it'll already be out, happy and healthy. Or we'll find her, and she'll struggle, and we'll do what we can and it works or it doesn't." It was all a bit of a gamble, but then what wasn't in life. "Wouldn't be able to put my head to my pillow knowing she was out here suffering and I might have made a difference if I was here, so here I am. Whether she wants me or not — it'll be not — I'll do my best to make sure she makes it. It's her first time too, makes it extra risky."

Colt dusted some shrubbery from her hair as her and the mare cut back into the open, aiming for some rocky areas nearby to search next. They moved into a trot to close the open distance faster, slowing again when they got closer to the more treacherous areas. "Even if it wasn't about business, it'd be the right thing to do." Colt called over to him. Because, well it was a business. This baby was money, and the mom was future money, and ranching was always a bit of give and take with money so she needed to take all she could.

They'll never stay home
And they're always alone

just because the fog is there

Vesper listened without interrupting, his gaze mostly forward, but every so often it slid toward Colt—measuring, considering, intrigued in a way that had nothing to do with the terrain. The shadows at his heels stilled, letting the horse do the work, and for once the demigod looked less like something sharp and spectral, and more like someone simply absorbing.

He shifted in the saddle just enough to duck a low branch of his own, glancing sidelong at the woman who rode like she’d been born doing it. "A lotta people don’t stick around unless there’s a sure outcome," he added, voice thoughtful now. " An' you’re out here chasin’ maybes." There was a note of admiration in it, though he didn’t call it that. Just let it hang in the air between them like one of the gathering shadows that always seemed to trail behind him.

"You always like this?" he asked, a touch of wry humour returning to his tone as he eyed the rocky terrain ahead. "Or is it just the unicorns that get you all noble and soft-spoken?" He wasn’t mocking her—if anything, there was a trace of challenge there, like he wanted to see how far her edges went before they gave way to something else.

don't mean nothing's behind it

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

Cowboys ain't easy to love
And they're harder to hold

A few rocks scattered underhoof, sounding like strong rain as they slid and tumbled off each other on the sloping granite path. Colt leaned back in the saddle, adding her weight to the hindend tilt of her mare. Her steps were slow, but sure, as she picked her way through the treacherous path. One downside to her preference for horses was that their single toe didn't let them climb as assuredly as the unicorns. It had gotten her in a tight spot once or twice when trying to ride in the same spots as the horned beasts. "Easy girl," Colt murmured encouragingly.

"I don't know any of those people," Colt called back to him once her mare jumped the final stretch and was on more horizontal ground. Her nose wrinkled up in thought, and she reined her mount around to better regard him. "Sounds a bit dull!" She chose not to add, and sad. It seemed the kind of situation where someone wouldn't stand with you unless they were sure they didn't have pick you up. Now, not standing next to someone because they were wrong, that she could understand, but that wasn't what he'd said. Though, despite understanding it, she wouldn't do that either. If her friend was in a jam, she'd be there regardless. If her friend was wrong, she'd say that after they got their asses out of the fire, not during.

Not here just for chit chat, she bid her mare to resume the search. The hoofsteps rung with an echoing quality across the stone that was soothing, the sound tickling the right part of her brain. His words carried their own bounce against the rock as he wondered after her, and she shook her head with a smile at it. "It's just life," she said with a shrug, unable to see what was unique about what she was doing. Her kin, her friends, her team, they were one and the same in this. Different in other ways sure, but not this. "Are you never like this?" she challenged back, leaning forward now as her mare hiked up the other side of the shale, their search fruitless. He seemed... like someone still chasing something he hadn't quite named yet. For some reason, she hoped he’d find it.

They'll never stay home
And they're always alone

just because the fog is there

Vesper didn’t answer right away. He adjusted his grip on the reins, letting the silence stretch as his gelding clambered a few careful steps up the incline Colt had already conquered. Chip moved with deliberate precision, guided as much by shadowy nudges as by his own surefooted instinct, and Vesper stayed balanced by the press of one hand against the saddle horn. When he reached the flatter ridge, he exhaled slowly—less from exertion than thought.

"I’m like that sometimes," he said eventually, the words slow, like they’d been sifted through before chosen. His gaze skimmed the slope below, the dark trees, the creeping dusk. "Mostly just when it comes to my sisters, though." It wasn’t the kind of admission that came easy, not from a man like him. But Colt's question hadn’t been casual, not really, and it deserved more than some evasive smirk. Vesper turned his head just enough to meet her eyes, the faintest curve touching the corner of his mouth. "Though usually they're the ones out startin' fires." Reaching out the demigod gives the gelding a scratch on the wither. "You strike me as the kind that burns clean through. Even when nobody’s watchin’."

The compliment wasn’t wrapped in flirtation, though it easily could’ve been. It was... observational. Earnest, in the rare way Vesper sometimes was when someone got close enough to see the thoughts under the shadows. He looked at her a beat longer, then flicked his gaze forward again, scanning the craggy trail and the tree-choked ridges for even a glint of gold.

"You think she’ll be alone? The mare." His tone had gentled, losing some of its usual drawl. "Or will others come runnin’ when we find her?"

don't mean nothing's behind it

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

Cowboys ain't easy to love
And they're harder to hold

Colt surveyed the area, giving the mare a break after the climb back up to even ground. She chewed thoughtfully on her lip, trying to think of where the golden girl would have holed up. Vesper's voice drew her attention back to him, the seriousness of thought fading into something softer for him as he provided some unexpected details. Though she still barely knew him, he struck her as the quiet sort. Someone who listened more than spoke, someone good at watching. He was not so aloof as to be peculiar, which seemed intentional, a careful strategy of blending in enough that he never stood out unless he wanted it. She felt it though, from time to time, the weight of his gaze, the assessments churning in those star-strung blue eyes. She had not let it bother her, at first. After all, she had measured him a few times tonight to gauge his worth in some manner or another. It was a different feeling to have it returned so boldly though. Doling out truths was always easier than taking them. Funny how that worked.

Her lips pressed into a line, which kept anything else from coming though. She turned her head away from him, lest she get snared in that icy stare, and shifted in her saddle with an extra weight pressed into one stirrup. "Family is important." she said into the night as much as to him, and cleared her throat faintly. She chose to focus on the first bit he'd revealed, not entirely sure what to do with the last of it, so ignoring it seemed as fine a choice as any. Unfortunately, he'd still put it out there, made it exist, and it left some kind of stain on her thoughts. She covered it with her words, buried it with the task at hand, well practiced at hiding what she did not feel like dealing with. "They're fortunate to have you looking after them." A glance with a smile was all she could afford him, before she set her heels back on her mare and kept her feet moving ahead of his depthless shadows.

"She'll be alone," she answered back to his question, the sound of her voice stuttered a bit by the trot that beat beneath her. She and the mare moved at a steady clip, anxious to add some space, to keep her head clear. "It's an intimate moment. Mother and child bond for a while, and the foal gets strong within a few hours and days. When she's ready, she'll rejoin the herd, when the bond is sealed and the babe's legs can run steadily." Even them being there was a bit intrusive, but as she'd said, the risk of losing one of them, or both, wasn't worth the privacy the mare might prefer. Besides, more were less defensive with people than their own kind.

Colt breathed in, excitement alighting in her voice as she caught a flash of yellow between the brambles. "I think I see her!" she called out to Vesper, slowing her horse to a halt. A series of shrubs and a few trees encircled the area near her, some natural barbed wire in the form of thickets lining most of the border. "How did she get in there," Colt wondered, her 'brows pinching together as she studied the terrain.

They'll never stay home
And they're always alone

just because the fog is there

Vesper caught the flicker of thought before Colt ever spoke—a flash of discomfort beneath her measured quiet, the way she tucked his compliment away rather than meet it head-on. He didn’t press. He never needed to. But he let the faintest hum of agreement settle between them, silent and shared. He shifted in the saddle as Chip reached the ridge, one hand trailing along the gelding’s wither in a slow pass that steadied both of them. Colt’s voice rose through the dusk a moment later, rough with motion and meaning, and though she turned her head away, he felt the glance before it came. Vesper's mouth curved faintly—not the sharp grin he wore like armour, but something quieter. "Most days it’s the other way around," he murmured, but he didn’t push the sentiment.

Not when the air between them was already brimming with more important things.

The gelding shifted beneath him, ears flicking forward, but Vesper kept him still with a murmured word and a tightening of his reins. His gaze scanned the barrier, noting the way the branches bowed, the uneven dips in the undergrowth—like something had threaded through them slowly, deliberately. The mare hadn’t panicked when she went in. She’d chosen this place. That meant she was either calm… or already too weak to be anything else.

He glanced sidelong at Colt, her silhouette framed by the last fingers of light clinging to the trees. Her posture was taut again, that focus sharpening her already honed edges. And despite the quiet urgency rising between them, Vesper’s voice dropped a shade softer as he said, "I can make you a path." Without waiting for the answer, he swung down from the saddle, landing lightly in the grass. The shadows around his boots deepened, snaking forward into the thickets like search dogs called to heel, before parting the snarling thicket apart carefully and quietly so as not to spook the mare within.

don't mean nothing's behind it

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

COLT

Cowboys ain't easy to love
And they're harder to hold

His presence was not immediately felt as the solitude of concentration held her. Her thoughts spun in a multitude of directions, trying to discern which thread would have the better outcome if she grasped it. He pulled one out for her, the line taut as he plucked it out with his voice, his offer, his action. She blinked as she turned towards him, the darkness around him coalescing into something tamed. It was a sight to behold as he bent the spaces between stars to his will, thought equally it was difficult to see. The darkness was more like the blur at the edge of your vision late at night, there, until you turned whereupon it vanished. It was something that couldn't be caught, by sight or otherwise, and yet he leashed it with an expertise that her ranch hounds could learn from.

Forgetting, briefly, that this was more than a show, Colt slid from her mare and stepped towards the path he'd wrought. She crouched, breath softening into shallow pulls, as she crept past the brambles and into the nest the unicorn had crafted behind them. There, shimmering and shining with the wet of afterbirth, a little black colt fumbled to rise. A white star bloomed from the hard nub where his horn would sprout. The golden mare stilled her cleaning, her lance gleaming as she angled her head cautiously. Both seemed safe, and healthy, so Colt clambered back out to the exterior of the thistles. She dusted the debris from her knees as she stood upright, sighing with a relief she hadn't realized she hadn't had. "They're both alright," she murmured to him, eyes bright as she turned them to him with a grateful smile.

"Guess I won't have to camp out all night after all." Although perhaps, pulling an all nighter with the right company wouldn't have been so bad. "I need to stay, for a bit though, until I'm sure he can nurse." She cocked one leg out to the side and leaned into the opposing hip, her hands folding across one another. "Thank you, for your help, most wouldn't have bothered. You can leave Chip here and I can pony him back when I go home later, or if you want you can take him to the House of Midnight and I can swing by later and grab him. Should be a hitching post nearby you can tie him." She didn't offer it, because she didn't think he'd want it, but he was also welcome to stay. The stars were worth watching tonight. "It's the least I can do for ya." Offering him a ride that was, after interrupting his evening plans.

They'll never stay home
And they're always alone

just because the fog is there

Vesper remains still as Colt slips through the path he carved, his shadows retreating in silent, respectful coils once she's through. The moment stretches long and quiet, broken only by the soft sounds of the night and the rhythmic shift of hooves as Chip shifts his weight beneath him. He doesn't speak, doesn't intrude—not when something sacred is happening behind that wall of thorns.

Only when Colt reappears, dusting her knees and wearing a smile bright enough to rival the stars overhead, does he let out a slow breath, like tension he hadn't admitted to holding has finally eased. "Good," he says simply, but the word is thick with something softer. Relief. Respect. Maybe something a little rarer.

His gaze lingers on her a beat too long when she leans into her hip like that—easy, confident, bright-eyed in the dark. Then he looks away, flicking a glance toward the horizon before nodding once. "I’ll take him," Vesper murmurs, giving Chip a light pat as he shifts in the saddle. "You can swing by the House of Midnight, say tomorrow 'round 10? He'll be tied up out front." A pause. Then, with a flicker of something dry but warm in his tone and a wink: "So will I."

He doesn't wait for a reply, not really. Just lifts two fingers in a lazy farewell and nudges the gelding into motion, shadows coiling up once more as they melt into the starlit trail—leaving behind only hoofprints, stirred leaves, and the promise of another meeting hanging in the air.

~FIN

don't mean nothing's behind it

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3