 Fresh from her encounter with the grey mare, Evren turned her nose toward the mountain looming in the distance and followed the river. It gurgled merrily at her side, and while her mind turned over the things she had learned, she reached over a few times to snatch a drink from its surface. The water was cool and almost sweet, far more palatable than the lukewarm sulfur-smelling oasis that sustained her herd back at home.
She was just beginning to think that she would like to visit this place more often in the future when she rounded a bend in the river and the forest parted, unveiling the falls in all their glory. They cascaded from a great, sheer cliff, spilling like a veil over the craggy rocks and finally crashing into the beckoningly deep pool below. The young mare stared at them in awe for a long time, and did not move on until she was confident she would be able to remember exactly how it looked.
It was the mountain that called her, but it took some time for her to locate a navigable trail up the sheer walls that flanked either side of the falls. Several times during her ascent she stumbled and nearly fell to her death, but the adrenaline it gave her was exhilarating like nothing she had ever known before. She reached the top sweating and with scuffed, bloody knees, but there was a smile on her face as she looked out over the view. She would not forget the sea of green, yellow, and gold that stretched out before her in a hurry, or the sight of the ocean beyond, so distant it was little more than a sliver.
When she finally turned toward the flat plain that stretched ahead, she slammed her hooves into the grass and nearly shied back over the drop behind her when she discovered a horse right in her path. The stranger was small and fine-boned, with a sloped nose just like the grey mare's, but where Nyessa had been pale and rosy, this mare was dark and swarthy. "Oh!" Evren exclaimed, pushing past her initial shock to approach the stranger with bright curiosity in her eyes. "I wasn't expecting to see anyone up here. You gave me such a fright."
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