The Academy: heartsongs; Astarte.

It is in their crossing curves that she loses herself; lost in the thoughts of snakes entwined in the grass and something else - something that emerges from the fog of morning and thought and mare-scent, that tickles about her nostrils and eyes. Raven turns her face deeper into the red flesh and further from the memory that scratches at her like a thorn; she wants to ignore it though this familiar weaving of fur and mane bids to remain.

These things shatter in a moment.
One instance of enlightenment that causes disruption and turmoil.
(The latter boils in her blood, hot and arid until her veins sing from pain and terror.)

At first, she is not certain she heard what she heard but the terror glints white around the blackberries that are her eyes - blackberries to the emeralds that glint from a face of knowing earth and reveal the naked branches and dried-up streams of Raven’s true self. She quails but is caught in the serpentine weavings of their selves and the fear that crawls along her spine on spider-legs, fine and gossamer and impossible to rid herself of.

She forgets to breathe until she sucks in a deep, heavy breath that fills her lungs and defeats them. “What did you call me?” It terrifies her, that her true name flies through the air on sparrow-wings when what she hears in her ears is the deafening beat of a raven’s. Her eyes dart madly to the sky in search of a blackbird with the world in his eyes but there is nothing but the passage of time scrawled in sun-descent and cloud-shadow. She cannot help it; she trembles at the sudden nakedness of her spirit and forgets to ask who it is that she is meant to find.

This mare has power over her and Raven is afraid but after a few ridiculous moments of loud, terrified breathing; she calms and she trusts and tucks her nose beneath the red mare’s mane. Into the folds of hair and flesh and familiar scent, she whispers, “You named me -- Yehl is my true name but it is a secret name of the spirit. I trust you to tell no one as I am known by Raven.” The concept of true (or secret) names and use names is perhaps beyond most. It is an archaic thing from the herd past into which she was given first breath as a foal and later, given (born, they held to old customs and even older gods) a second wind as a member of the horse-tribe before… Before…

Raven has broken the embrace and turned to regard the distance between herself and the mountains, thinking about the path from that herd to this one.
Hours pass and Astarte is thieved from the range.
After that, she follows an unfamiliar path to an unfamiliar place that smells of age and ritual.
Her heart-song beckons to the red mare from the ancient deeps of this place and Raven trusts that Astarte will hear it and come.