Utaku Sadie
Sadie is the last born quadruplet of Utaku Naomi and Kakita Kiyoshi. Like most Unicorn children, she spent her youngest years being raised by her father and her father's partner, Utaku Mato, with her siblings and Juri's children. Their mothers came home from war and their jobs to check in on them, and they were raised, as women, to idolize and respect their mothers' dedication to their craft.
Like all young Utaku women, Sadie was to become a Battlemaiden. She was given her horse Shannon shortly before her Gempukku. She immediately was in love. She slept in the stables with her, was inseparable from her. She rode into her first skirmish on her under the guidance of her mother and alongside her sibling, Setsuna, and a few other graduating girls. She had opted for the path of horse archery, separating herself from her mother's style slightly and instead taking after her Aunt Utaku Sera. For the first four years of her adulthood, she was flying high. She knew she'd take over for her mother, she'd make her proud, she'd be the Utaku family Daimyo and she would have a bond as strong as her mother with her horse, Anko.
Then it happened. She was out delivering a message to her uncle in Crane lands as an excuse to just ride for weeks with Shannon, and she found herself set upon by a group of bandits. One got a good shot and dragged her down off her horse, and Shannon proceeded to become defensive. When they started to surround her, her horse started to fight them off on her own. Sadie's bow had broken, and her skill with a sword was not as good.
They killed her.
Sadie was beside herself when her horse fell. She was quickly overwhelmed as she struggled to get to her. If she could get to her, she could administer medical attention, she told herself, but she quickly blacked out when she was struck upside the head in her attempts.
Sadie awoke to most of her things having been taken and the bandits gone. Shannon was laying unmoving beside her. She didn't move from that spot for days, just thinking she'd starve there. Better to die here than go home when her incompetence had caused the death of her love.
She was hallucinating by day 3 without food. She'd had water, but not enough. It was in that haze she thought she saw her. Shannon, wreathed in flame, nipping at her. She thought she'd follow the horse to the afterlife--that this was going toward the light. To her surprise, she ended up, instead, at a temple, where a lion priestess quickly assessed she was not well and dragged her inside.
She was nursed back to health, and informed that she was guided her by a spirit. The priestess was able to communicate with the ghost that had brought her here, and Sadie was comforted somewhat by having Shannon by her side, even if she could not see her. "She wants you to be safe," the priestess told her, but Sadie was still unable to accept the situation. She sought prayers to communicate with her horse, even on the other side, and the Priestess obliged. Shannon's strongest element and communication was in fire, and so she was taught prayers in the tongue of the fire kami. Sadie couldn't hear or see her horse, but she could feel her whenever a prayer manifested a flickering light, or a roaring inferno.
Sadie placed herself on a self-imposed Musha Shugyo. She still would not go home. She wandered around with the ghost of a horse taking care of her for a year before she stumbled on Batu.
Batu was a horse spirit, but at the moment she heard him, she only heard a distressed horse and the sound of bakemono growls. Without thinking, she rushed toward the sounds, finding a large bay stallion trying to fend off an attacking squad of goblins. Sadie jumped into the fray and drove them off, terrified of watching another horse get harmed on her watch. She tried to shoo him off afterward, but he started following her about.
He hid that he was a spirit from her. Sometimes she'd run into a young boy when the horse would wander off, and confusedly ask him if he'd seen a horse around when she was worried. He was always flirtatious with her--strangely intimate, like he knew her. Sadie still did not put two and two together.
Eventually, she began to ride Batu as a warhorse; eventually, she got brave enough to go home and admit her failure. Eventually, she realized Batu was smarter than any horse she'd ever interacted with, even the Utaku Warhorses, who were the paragon of their kind. Eventually, Batu revealed to her that he was a spirit.
Eventually, he earned acknowledgment in the Unicorn clan as a Samurai.
Eventually, they were married.
She became the Utaku Family Daimyo, and they had 5 children--without a midwife. The first four were boys, but she needed one heir, so she kept going until there was a girl.