Dawn Brings New Beginnings

Bonus Assignment for #DCS-RehabChallenge
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It had been nearly a week and a half since Flight and Mikael had brought the mare home to Rose Thorn, five days since Flight had first been able to touch her. Each day she trusted him a little more, even letting him take her number tag off, finally. She wasn't at the point where she would come up to the fence when he was around to say hello, but that was fine. The fact that she didn't so much as flinch when he gave her a pat was huge in Flight's book. In that time it was decided that it was time to move her out of the smaller arrival paddock and into somewhere more roomy. There was a brief discussion on where she should go. Since she was due to drop the foal any day now, it was suggested that she could be moved into a brood stall, but that was shot down- she had never been stalled before, and they didn't want to cause her undue amounts of stress, so to a slightly larger paddock she went. The new one hadn't been used for a while, its regular occupants having been relocated or leased out. The grass was a little overgrown, but not extremely, and it had a nice tree to provide shade. It was on a hill, but the mare didn't seem to mind, thankfully. The best thing? It was right next to the vet's building, should any complications arrive. The pintaloosa settled in nicely, seeming to enjoy the extra room she had to stretch her legs.

While she had gotten used to Flight, the mare still wasn't comfortable around the others, which made a vet check rather difficult. Flight tried to help the mare warm up to Tori, the resident vet, but there wasn't much luck- the mustang seemed to draw the line at only having one person be able to be around her.

Everyone was overjoyed, to say the least, when the foal came without any troubles. The colt came sometime in the middle of the night. When Flight had left the mare to go to bed, there had been no signs she was about to go into labour that he could see, but when he brought her a morning treat, a little blue roan was clumsily bouncing around the exhausted looking new mother. She let out a large breath, bordering on an exasperated sigh, in greeting, and the foal looked up to see what she doing and caught sight of Flight. The little colt bounded behind his dam and peaked at Flight from underneath her stomach and stared for a moment before creeping around the mares legs, the mare who seemed to actually be dosing off. Ever so slowly, the little colt came up to investigate and see what Flight was, his ears perked and alert and a gentle breeze blowing through his baby fur. Flight didn't dare move, but waited, and just stood there as the foal finally got near him to sniff, then back off, then come back and sniff again. It reminded Flight of when Alex's kitten came across something new- creep up, poke, run and hide, then repeat. The fifth time seemed to be the charm, and the foal was done investigating, and he stood there, staring at Flight, waiting for him to do something, so Flight climbed through the fence, an act that started a snort from the foal, and walked up to the little guy. Behind him, the mare watched wearily, but seemed fine with the interaction for now, so Flight put out a hand and scratched the foal behind the ear, the area that his mother seemed to enjoy the most, and he hoped the same would be true for the foal. It was- as Flight continued the little foal leaned into his hand. The mare seemed to calm down some at the sight. She also seemed to consider Flight to be a suitable babysitter- or perhaps the better term was playmate- and took the opportunity to get some sleep.