Olympian Exiles

It had been some time since the injured Cavitto stallion had been brought back to Haven. Persephone had watched him at a distance, figuring he was keeping himself apart because he was in pain. If she'd been able to mend his wounds, it would have been different, but as things stood she had nothing to offer him, really, so she hadn't tried to make any overtures. Today, though, she saw him carefully lip portions of his feed and throw it on the ground at his hooves for the local bird population to share, and took this as a sign that he was feeling more sociable.

"How is your shoulder feeling?" she asked him as she moved up to the fence between the mares' and geldings' pasture and the small temporarily-fenced-in area that had been set up for Icarus's recovery.

"About how you might expect after getting bitten by thunder," came the stallion's unfriendly-sounding answer, and he shifted to put his body between her and the feeding birds, as though thinking she might threaten them.

"Thunder?" Persephone echoed, looking at the feathered grullo in puzzlement. "Zeus didn't attack me."

Icarus raised his head and gave her a look as though she was a singularly simple foal, not a grown mare. "You're here. How can you say Zeus did not move against you?"

"Zeus welcomes us back," she pointed out, holding her head a little higher.

"Some welcome." Icarus pawed the ground, and winced when the movement put extra weight on his still-healing shoulder. "'You can come back, after you prove yourselves.' No thank you."

Persephone shied back, looking at the stallion with big eyes. "You don't mean that."

"You go ahead, work your hooves to the bone to get welcomed back home. Then as soon as someone angers Zeus again — you know someone will — you're back here trying to show your loyalty all over." The injured horse snorted. "Mare of Sisyphus. Me, I won't shoulder that eternal burden."

Persephone shook her silver mane. "I hope time will add nectar to whatever bitter drink is in your soul's trough."

"Before that happens, Eos will have moved the sun, and maybe, if you're lucky, its rays will no longer blind you. I won't be betrayed and cast aside twice. Now leave me be, you silly mare."

As Persephone walked away, her heart heavy with concern for the embittered stallion, she could hear him mutter under his breath, maybe to the birds by his feet, "She'd betray me too, one day."