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vaguely backdated before batu left with tianlong <3

Horses are the only true aristocrats of the steppe, and many mares were coming into foal. He suspects Tsetseg is pregnant again. If such a thing is true, then, “Tzookhor was quick to get a foal on her.”

Khaan side-eyes Sayana. Her roan stallion had always had an ambitious streak. Tsetseg never had much tolerance for stallions in the past, but he hasn’t seen her in over a year, and hadn’t he learned that the seasons remade them all?

Hoofprints signal the herd’s latest movement, the pair following their marks. Here, in summertime, the same boundless space of the sky is mirrored on the land. Scattered amid the faultless green sea of mid-summer grasses, countless flocks of sheep and goats, shifting about like cloud shadows.

Batu crests a hill and looks outwards, the tails on his deel bannering behind him.

Blue is forever.
If only it could encompass her wholly, make her blue and everywhere for everyone. Be a cloud for someone’s rainy day, be the sun for someone’s light. Be the sky as someone’s everything, and everyone’s infinity. What a blessing and curse it must’ve been, to be so lovely.

Spirits of the lush raced through the plains. Her ankles and legs were tickled all over, and Batu flanked by the nature spirits of the earth and Sayana rounding over hillside to be at his, just behind, and watching the horseman’s eyes shepherd home, smiling. Home everywhere.

She is a good mother.

“Is she?” A smile lingers. He watches Sayana watching the sky. “Been so long. Don’t know what she’s good at anymore.”

There has been enough noise these past years to fill several lifetimes. The low howl of the wind feels like heaven.

“What about you?” Khaan starts down a lull in the hillside, “you good at anything now?” He means it in jest, but it ends up sounding sadder than intended.

Horses were counted, and then many dots of sheep flocks crowding the horizon. If only they were more like the herd, lesser than the hundreds or thousands of individual souls.

Like the shamshir, a raise of brows, grinning to akin a mare and weapon with jest. One of the many blades in which had caught her interest when running the silk road walk. Craftsmen of iranian wolves used aggressive taming of imported wilderness to trade with distant bands. Elephants to stampede land ore, and yaks to march crumbled remnants to their homeland for processing. She heard of their macaques, how they used nimble fingers to maintain a forge and sharpen stone or iron blades. Tsetseg was a defensive knife around foals.

I imagine she would cut a sad stud. Perhaps Batu would consider Tsetseg a perfect mare to ween a foal from for a future child of his own or a loved one. It would be a welcoming introductory to begin a bond early with their lifeblood.

You good at anything now?
Focus on your movement. Your swiftness.

A hunter's stalk down a self-made trail, disappearing below the green blanket. Hillside grasses stood longer than the flat field. And as though from nothingness, a body flew over top of his own, tackling the khan and rolling them fast to the bed evening out below until a dust cloud of pollen sprang from their soft landing.

Laughing, I believe I am good at most things, Tu! You will tell me what you believe I am good at when you feel it in your chest. Because only eyes not your own truly saw your potential and perfections. Sayana did not judge herself, in truth. Only continued to improve and try again, and would continue to do so until the world felt dark. On her back, dusted with yellow sweet from low wildflowers.
What has the new great khan learned?

He imagines she would. It seems like Tsetseg to lay down stringent rules between the mares and studs. She has grit, like Sayana— it is the grit that keeps them alive, that has kept their people alive for thousands of miles across the uplands, and this grit that would be sought for in stallions.

Sayana proves her own next, tumbling them to the soft pasture grounds, reminding Batu neither are so young anymore. Taunt-and-vaunt was a sort of pup’s game they used to play. If children quarreled, they would wrestle out the issue, or put it to another contest. When beaten, the loser had to leave their quarrel behind; but, so does the victor. Simpler times come to mind, with her standing proud as the hunter.

Batu remains where he has fallen, staring upward a breath. “I believe you,” rowdy, grinning, he scrambles to his feet, eyes blown wide. She has proven her strength; her tact, and there is no reason to deny her nokur except for the worry in his own heart.

“I’ve learned… that I have a lot more to learn,” is the evasive answer, mostly because everything he'd learned had been taught through war, and Batu has no desire to gray the day in this rumination.

Ahead, the horses nicker a greeting, and he hopes it is enough to occupy Saya.

How grim.

Did he know she would strike him in the field? Send him falling through the field? And did it remind him of their youth, if they were so old as to have lost it now? Sayana lived in the past, future and present all at once. Brought back what once was into the now, and redirected paths for the future so that all would be fed, healthy, and most of all so comfortable with a nazgur life that they took for granted all that they had. Mares milk, goat meat and long stories rooted from a life they deemed uneventful, spare for their teenage loves and adult woes with weather and poor trading days.

Tsetseg's nearness grabbed all attention, however, and a gentle approach was taken. Tzookhor watched at a distance, an eye to his mare before gathering an unspoken permission to leave them be. And he disregarded them and grazed with their young colt.

Come speak with your woman, her eyes were upon the rounded stomach, but she dared not to press Tsetseg to any extension which Batu could tame his bay.

Grim, though he does not see it as this. The road, for all its privations, had been enlightening— showed the nomad that no single god or way of living is correct, and he would never be compelled into war for Tengri’s dominion. A man must decide for himself what god it is he prays to. And so in alukhai no single idea would be blunt because they could absorb something from everyone.

Would it make them stronger, and not weaker? Would it save the nomads from these nearsighted failings of the Nazgur?

He sees the failings of wolfkind reflected in the bay’s flattened ears and the way she grunts stern and low, warding her babe. She is not his, anymore than the wind could be caught and cradled, and he eases his stride until it scarcely stirs the stalk of grass.

“Chhh, Tsetseg.”

The colt is more curious than his dam, drumming a little dance around the wolves. He must have been born after the war which has taught his mother wariness. Through great brown eyes he stares, starts, stamps, darts out to Tzookhor, and repeats.

Batu cannot help but warm to him.

And by the heavy barrel of her flanks, the bay will be mother to a second in a few months time.

"She's carrying again,” khaan whispers to Sayana, treading forward still, to see if Tsetseg would allow a closer inspection.