It had either been an eternity in which she slumbered or barely more than a wink of the eye, but she had slept with the water lapping at her sides. It sloshed against her skin and washed away the salt, the remnants of the ocean tainting the water and, perhaps, making drinking downstream an experience equal to getting a mouthful of salt. She didn’t care because she slept, and she slept there in the water because she didn’t care- a dreadful cycle that was likely to repeat itself until she found herself healed and nourished.

She never dreamed when she slept, and the black woman was more than thankful for that. Certainly the only thing her mind could contrive and twist into dreams were the horrific memories of the land crumbling into the sea and the screams of loved ones dying around her. When conscious, she would assert that she didn’t really love them and that they were simply a means to an end- that end being survival. The strong lived in packs, and the weak… well, they tended to die on their lonesome in the shadows somewhere.

As something prods against her bony back, she twitches, listening first to the agitated slosh of the water around her and the sound of the slowly rushing river filling her ears, all before she hears what to her sounds like the most irritating, grating voice she has heard in a while. Perhaps it was because she was tired, or perhaps it was because the large mare had awoken her from her much needed slumber. Either way, she twists her head around like a snake, ears pressed back against her dark, knotted, and damp mane to look up at the thickset mare.

The blanketed woman, though not much taller than herself, was perhaps three times her weight, given Leviathan’s emaciated state, and when some part of her instincts warned her to be polite or demure, she instead snaps her teeth in the direction of the hoof that had brushed her skin and speaks out with a ragged, harsh voice. “Well you’re a ray of fucking sunshine.” Glowering upwards at the woman, she thinks to rise so as to accept her death on her feet, of course, if the large mare decided to put an end to her for being so impolite. With much sloshing and splashing, she finally stands on four skinny legs, her similarly skinny neck held straight and her dark eyes burning holes in the face of the other mare. “What if I claimed this here drinking spot as my own? What are you going to do about it?”