Chapter Text
When Honey awakes, her first thought is that she feels hungry.
Which is nothing new. She wakes up every morning feeling hungry in some small way or other.
Still, she's awake, and already, her mind is working. It's a full-time job, being a horse like her, and she refuses to let herself slack off. Once she's conscious enough to get her body to move, she takes a moment to lift her head, lets her ears flicker back and forth as she takes in the sounds of the environment around her. There could be predators in the trees. Evil spirits in the air. Random people who were in desperate need of nuzzles. All three of which were equally alarming emergencies.
The first thing she hears is the running water of some creek. Then the sound of birds chirping loudly to each other as the sky slowly lightens with the rising sun. Her ears flick back towards the sound of a squirrel scurrying up a tree, though her rumbling stomach draws her attention away from her surroundings.
God, she was really hungry. It had been hours since she'd last eaten. She needs to do something about that; it was slowly becoming an emergency. Still, she snorts the itchiness from her nose, shaking the remaining bits of sleep from her form before allowing her head to swivel, her nostrils flared as she tries to sniff out Will's scent.
It takes her a minute or so of snuffling around, of poking around the corners of trees and pressing her nose to the damp earth (catching a few mouthfuls of grass as she does so), but she does eventually find him. He's lying beneath a rocky overpass, his back against her saddle and his hat pulled over his eyes, his chest slowly rising and falling as he slumbers.
And, oh, he's precious like this. She can't bring herself to wake him, no matter how hungry she is.
He used to sleep so fitfully, his face pinched tight and his hands twitching uneasily against the fabric of the blanket he would lie on the ground of her stall. Even in his sleep, Honey could always smell the anxiety radiating from his form, the trembling fear, and aching sadness. She worried for him so. The first night he'd come running to her stall, she hadn't known what to do. She'd done the best she could to mother the poor child; she'd pressed her nose to his hands, his chest, his shoulders, carefully licked the streaks of salt on his cheeks. She'd tried to comfort him with soft rumbles and nickers of reassurance, just as her mother had done to her when she was a filly during thunderstorms, but the truth was that she'd felt so… so helpless that first night.
The next morning, when he'd left and returned to that big, scary house, she found herself anxiously pacing the edge of the pasture fence, slowly wearing down a trail along its length as she did so. If she'd felt helpless while he was in her care, it was nothing compared to how she felt when he was out of her sight.
At first, she'd tried to find his mother; after all, a colt such as Will needed the care of someone like him. He needed a mother who spoke his language, someone who could hold him in ways that she simply couldn't while he cried.
But she never saw his mother. As if she'd just disappeared from both her and Will's lives. She'd been almost frantic when she came to that realization; Honey wasn't equipped to raise a colt. She didn't have the first idea how.
But then, he'd kept returning to her stall at night. Tears dripping down his ruddy cheeks and angry, red lashes seared into his far-too-delicate flesh.
And Honey may not know how exactly to raise a colt, but she sure as all hell didn't want to leave him without a mother. Without someone who could look out for him.
So she'd stepped up to the incredibly important duty of raising Will as best she could. And, well, she probably did it better some days than others, but considering he's still alive and somewhat happy in life, she reckons she's not doing all that bad at the whole "mama" thing.
She'd been wanting him to leave that wretched old house for years now. The man who owned it always smelled of filth and bitter anger, and he'd spoken with a sort of predatory growl that always made her feel uneasy. She'd been so thrilledwhen he finally decided to leave, trying to frantically dash as far away from that horrific place as soon as Will was on her back.
And now, some time later, each day seemed to get a bit better and better.
He slept better. He smiled more. Laughed a lot more, always seemed excited about something or other.
And best of all, he stuck fairly close to her side at nearly all times. She liked being able to have her eye on him, liked being always nearby to protect him. She's not sure when colts of Will's species are supposed to break away from their mothers and become independent, but she selfishly hopes that that time will never come.
And so, because he looks so peaceful, and because she's just so incredibly fond of him, she decides that she's going to let Will sleep. Her stomach is rumbling again, but there's grass out on the clearing, so it's not all that bad. She can wait another hour or so.
But right as she turns to leave, she hears Will shift slightly. Her head whips back around to look at him with concern, ready to fuss over him as needed, but he merely mumbles something under his breath, shifting once more before settling back to slumber. She relaxes, her tongue coming out to lick her lips as she allows herself to calm. Will was okay; he was. He just needed to move a little, that's all.
And that's when she sees it; just beneath the collar of his shirt, something glittering in the sunlight.
For a while, she just stands there, ears pricked as she stares at this mysterious object. But eventually, curiosity gets the better of her; she carefully approaches his sleeping form, stretching her head out to try and get a better look at whatever it is that he's got around his neck. She can only see a hint of it, a faint sparkling thing that peeks from behind the buttons of his shirt. Her nostrils flare as she presses her nose over it, trying to sniff out what it could be, but Will's scent covers up most of it, so really, she gets nowhere in terms of her investigation.
She lets out a huff of air. It's almost infuriating how badly she wants to know what this thing is. Before she can think better about her actions, she presses her nose down more firmly against his chest and wiggles her upper lip against the buttons, repeating the action over and over until his shirt shifts just enough to reveal a large, glittering stone-looking thing around his neck. She pauses then, licking over the length of it, pressing her nose to it and inhaling curiously; there's a hint of metal, yes, but something else too, something she can't quite put a name to.
She needs to explore this thing further. Could she somehow lift it from around his neck? She desperately wanted to examine it better, as Will's scent kept interfering with her exploration of this strange item. She licks it again as she thinks, letting the taste spread over her tongue again. And then she wonders if the item itself is soft or not, so she tilts her head and bites down on its surface, and yep, sure enough, it's hard as a stone-
"Honey?" comes Will's tired voice, breaking her thoughts. "'S that… that you?"
Shoot.
She hadn't meant to wake him up. His hand moves up to push his hat away from his eyes, but she quickly moves to bite into the brim of it, trying to pull it back down over his face to communicate, No, bad colt, do not wake up, go back to sleep-!
Will squawks indignantly as she pulls the hat over his nose and mouth, and then his chest shakes as he starts to laugh, his hands pushing her nose away. "Yep. That's my girl, alright. Morning, sunshine."
Well, it was too late now to fix her mistake. She reluctantly releases the brim of his hat, watching with a guilty expression as he pulls it off his head and sets it aside, his other hand coming up to rub at his bleary eyes as he yawns. When he opens his eyes, they immediately land on the stone around his neck, fully out beneath the morning sun. He freezes, his eyes widening in shock. She lets out a concerned whicker, pressing her nose to his ear.
"Was this out the whole time I was sleeping?!" he groans, though his face is stretching into a grin. "God Almighty, can you imagine if someone walked by and saw this thing hanging from my neck? I might as well print 'thief and criminal' on my forehead!"
Despite his apparent excitement, she ignores his antics; she's remembered her job of caring for him once more, and now she's determined to do it right, especially after failing in such a spectacular way by waking him up. His forelock is all wonky and strange-looking, so she sets to work on it, rubbing her nose through it and snuffling as she tries to smell for any kind of sickness in his body. He ignores her, grabbing the stone and lifting it up as if trying to get a better look at something. He lets out another guffaw, sitting up and pushing her nose away as he unloops the stone from around his neck and holds it up to her in his palm.
"You got bits of grass and slobber all over this thing!" he scolds playfully. "It's very valuable, I'll have you know!"
She has no idea what he's saying to her. She doesn't know why he keeps trying to talk to her, but over her many years raising him, she's discovered that Will is a very social colt. He's always talking one way or another, sometimes to other people, but mostly to her when she's around. And she wants to encourage him socially as best she can. She doesn't want him to feel stupid for not realizing that she doesn't understand a word he's saying, so she tries to at least appear interested in what he's telling her.
So to be polite and encouraging, she sniffs the stone in his hand and lets out an interested snort. Which seems to work, based on the way his grin widens before he leans forward and presses a loud, smacking kiss to her forehead.
"Reckon water is okay to wash a ruby in?" he asks her. She blinks at him, completely at a loss for a moment on what to do in response to his statement. But finally, she turns her head and licks at the callouses on his empty hand. When in doubt, she grooms him the best she can.
Thankfully, Will doesn't delay her breakfast. He pours her grain as soon as he's up, and she eats as quickly as she can manage because if there's one thing she's learned over her years of fussing over him, Will is a restless young thing. Already, he's beginning to move through his morning routine. She has to follow him around the camp to complete her daily check-up and cleaning of him. She licks the salt of sweat from his forearms as he scrubs the strange stone clean in the nearby creek before looping it over his head again. She gently runs her teeth over his hipbones and up the curve of his spine to check for itching or pain as he lifts her feet and scrapes the debris from them with a metal hook. She tries to fix his hair again as he pulls her bridle on, but he just catches her nose in his hands, grinning as he gently squishes it before releasing it again and walking off towards his supplies.
Well, she'd tried her best to make him look presentable. And though it wasn't perfect, he was clearly happy, so she doesn't worry about it too much.
That's all she really wants; for Will to be happy. And he isn't always happy, even with this new life. She finds him sometimes with a slip of paper in his hand, staring wistfully at a picture of some dark figure that he'd ripped from a larger piece of paper. On some days, he gets this misty look in his eyes, and she has to work overtime with nuzzles and soft nickers to get him happy again.
She gets the feeling sometimes that even though he was happy in his new life, he still misses a lot of things from his old place. And she understands that. Truth be told, there are things that she misses from the old place, too.
There's a stallion that she misses. One who was only in her life for a short period of time, but one whom she'd recognized as a soul in need of her tender and loving care. A stallion that she still sees every once in a while, but one that she never gets the chance to stay with for long.
She misses Diavolo. So much it hurts sometimes. And she gets the feeling that Will misses Diavolo's person; after all, they'd seemed to connect so deeply, and Will had always been such a lonely colt, especially after his last partnership had disappeared so suddenly.
But he's away from that bad place and that bad man. He no longer comes crying to her with welts on his arms and legs, and he no longer smells of fear and anxiety all the time. He seems to be having fun in this new life of his, and she's more than happy to accompany him all along the way.
After all, what else was a mama supposed to do for her colt?