A foal

Then there was a new life. A birth. He did not remember it clearly, nor wish to.

Blood, pain, fire — he endured, and that was all.

What mattered were the first steps. The foal shivered to its feet, thin legs trembling, eyes wide and wet. It swayed, toppled, rose again. Each stagger was a victory, each breath a miracle Macius had never imagined. He watched, hollowed, humbled, unable to turn away.

The stallion pressed close, ears pinned, eyes dark. He circled, claiming, guarding, defiant even now. Macius bared his teeth in answer, a sound deep in his throat — not stallion’s challenge, not colt’s fear, but something older, stranger. The foal stumbled to him, pressed its small head into his flank.

In that touch, something shifted. Not curse, not mockery. Command. He was no knight in armor, no stallion to rule by ****. Yet the herd would turn to him. The foal already had.

Macius raised his head. The stallion’s shadow loomed, but for the first time, he did not shrink. The tower of defiance he had built now opened outward, not just to endure, but to lead.

Despite all his reservations, despite the way he clung to his humanity, to his virility, the need was irrepressible. The foal was his charge. To protect it, he could not remain only defiant. He had to lead.

Not as knight. Not as stallion. As mare.

The herd was small — a foal, a sire, himself. Yet even that was enough. A seed of command, fragile but alive.

Time had come to leave the caves. Time had come to run under the endless skies.