Sabba nursed while his dam’s tongue bathed him in bold, forceful strokes. Her milk was warm and sweet, a balm against his days-dried throat. She cleaned the wounds on his neck, and as she worked, the colt’s head spun, clearing briefly, then clouding over again as the fever swept through him.

His belly filled. Despite the trembling heat, his legs grew strong again. In one moment of clear thinking, he noted the color of the mare’s coat, soft and gray and nothing at all like his dam’s. For a breath, he froze. Then his instincts carried him away again, reminding him that life was strength and strength came from the milk he desperately needed.

A gentle voice crooned to him, “Easy, easy.”

Sabba trembled with relief and with the spreading heat. He drank as if he would never stop, and was certain he was safe again. Loved again.

Until something firm knocked against his shoulder.

“Mine.”

An angry voice blared in his ears, and Sabba flattened them to shut it out. He angled his body to shield the mare’s flank and was drinking again when something pinched his rump.

Sabba kicked, and a foal’s squeal dragged him from his meal. He twisted, teeth bared, and his vision spun.

“Shame, Dabon.” A mare’s voice chided, and it was this, the strange sound of a dam that was not his own, which cleared the misunderstanding.

Sabba hung his head, staggering a step away from her warmth. He blinked against the blurriness. His neck burned where the mare had cleaned his wound. Her milk had given him strength, but his body still fought against him as if possessed.

“Who are you?” Sabba blurted, squinting at the blurry shapes that were wholly strangers to him.

“I am Muria,” the mare said. She was soft gray of coat, and when she shifted, her white spots drifted like falling snow. “This is my colt, Dabon, and you are very far from home, little one.”

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Dabon lifted his upper lip, making a face at Sabba. His mother nudged him less than gently with her nose, lowering her head enough to look both colts in the eye. Even scolding her foal, Muria had a kind gaze, a soft set to her ears. One look at her gentle expression was too much for Sabba.

He began to bawl.

Sabba’s sides heaved with each sob. His nostrils ran. His eyes teared. A frantic keening took him, and each breath lent it more volume. The other colt squealed and pranced to the far side of his mother. Ears back and head low, he glared at the emotional from behind the shelter of his dam’s belly. The mare shifted from hoof to hoof, and her voice was forced from its gentle tones in order to be heard over Sabba’s grief.

“Hush now. There, there.”

Her face rippled in Sabba’s vision. The chasm, the whole world around them spun.

“It’s been a hard time for you, hasn’t it?” Someone else’s mother asked. “A long road.”

“I want my dam,” Sabba howled. “But the raptors… the grassland… and I fell. In. A. Hole.”

“Poor baby,” Muria soothed. “Poor lost foal.”

“He’s a weirdo,” Dabon declared, his voice slithering underneath his dam’s. “He’s too loud.”

“Hush.” The mare’s voice sharpened, and she nudged her colt aside with her hip. “He’s all alone, Dabon. And he needs our help.”

“He’s sick,” Dabon’s anger chased away Sabba’s grief. It sparked an answering fire in the lost colt’s belly.

“I am not.” Sabba meant to shout, but it came out more like a moan.

“Easy,” Muria said. “Save your strength for the fever, little one.”

“What’s a fever?” he asked her, eyeing the rival foal sideways. If he really was sick, Sabba had no doubt Dabon would prance on his grave.

“It means your wounds have soured,” Muria said. “We need to clean them, and to get you food and drink, and a great deal of rest.”

She didn’t say sick, and Sabba was grateful to her for that. He had a feeling she could have, and made a point of not looking in Dabon’s direction. Food and drink, he’d managed to find on his own, but rest… rest sounded a little bit too tempting.

“You must come with us,” the mare continued. “Come back to the kinfe and safety, little one. No, Dabba, don’t make that face. We’ll not leave him out here on his own to suffer.”

Sabba liked the sound of her voice. He liked it even better when she was scolding Dabon. He enjoyed the shape of her, the way she was so like his own dam. But everything he admired about Muria reminded him that he had to get back to the grassland. He had to find his own mother.

But when Dabon scampered away from them, when Muria turned herself back toward the direction from which they’d come, a small voice hissed in Sabba’s mind. It said his mother was already gone, that he would never find her.

“Come, little one.”

This new mare called to him, and Sabba was simply too weak to argue.