Some part of her blood belonged in the desert. Despite her father’s careful, thin appearance and his choice to live on the colder continents, the little owl girl had been born to the hills; a place not too far from here that was almost as hot as the desert. Almost.

Sporting a disadvantageous color of skin, she sweats under the head of the sun, clinging to the side of a stray boulder that provides her with sufficient shade for the time being. As the day progressed, her sliver of a shadow had begun to grow skinnier, forcing her closer and closer to the edge of the rock until she started feeling the first blossom of head against her skin. Damn. With a huff and a sigh, her mind fumbles to find an excuse to leave, and leave she does. Towards the ocean, where the cool coastal breezes would chill her skin, and the water would wet her. Her trek is not long before she stumbles across what she assumes is the central watering hole, where a fine-boned black skinned woman is drinking and bathing.

A brilliant idea.

A smile to her lips and a skip in her step, she slides into the water on the opposite side of the pool, careful to keep her distance from the obvious desert native. Once she is knee deep in the water, she crumples to roll, and does so in a very unlady-like fashion. Belly up for a moment or two as she wiggles in the water, she resurfaces a moment later and turns her dark eyes to the other mare, watching quietly while she preens in the water, looking beautifully desert bred and as though she happily belonged her.

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