The ocean was quiet and beautiful today: a gently undulating, glassy reflection of the clear blue sky overhead. Orhan stood with the tips of his hooves touching the surf, his honey-brown eyes gazing out pensively into the horizon. He was thinner than usual, his hip bones prominent and his ribs showing, and his face was lined from many a sleepless night. Yet - for the time being, at least - he was calm. Calm like the ocean.
His mind was far away, out across the sea in a land of green valleys and wide rivers, in a place where he had been happy.
He could not say how long he stood there, but when he came to, the sun was hanging low and red above the water among streaks of peachy clouds, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees. The tide had gone out as well, leaving in its wake a lifeless jellyfish right at his feet in the damp sand. Orhan studied the strange, translucent creature for some time, and tried to imagine where it might had come from.
Had he been younger, he might have thought its presence was a sign: a message from the ocean, calling him to leave his home and venture across the waters to strange lands undiscovered. Instead, all it made him think of was the threat of horses who would hurt his family. Were they imaginary, as his head told him, or was it only a matter of time before his mother's worst fears were granted and they washed up on his shores, just like this jelly-creature from the depths of the ocean?
Calm though he was, Orhan felt doomed to speculation for the rest of his natural-born days.
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