One dark ear flicks toward the stallion and Þoka cracks open one eye to glare at him. But as she draws in a breath to retort, she sucks in the last of the water she was trying to expel and leans into another coughing fit. All she can manage between coughing is, “Ugh.” She hates him. How dare he make her swim that damned ocean again so soon and have the gall to stroll up the sand like he just took a paddle in a pond. Once she’s got her breath back she’ll tell him just where he can stuff it, but for now all the blue mare can do is stand and wheeze. No doubt Fjö∂ur would be laughing her ass off if she got to witness this.
Þoka coughs a final time and draws in a shallow breath, then one a little deeper, then a big inhale to fill her lungs with sweet, sweet air uncontaminated by saltwater. With it comes the scents of many others, one stronger than the rest, followed by a whicker on the wind. Þoka lifts her head and flicks water out of her ears. The horse heading toward them is red and taller than even the bald-faced guy and seems as unassuming as the stallion. Þoka pays only half-attention as she shakes herself out and then lifts her dark nose into the wind blowing around them to see if she can parse through the smells it carries.
When the mare addresses her as courteously (and suspiciously) as the male had on the other shore, Þoka moves up the beach to stand more or less with the other two, though she’s careful to keep her distance from them both. She’s still wary of the stallion’s motives and has equal reason to mistrust the mare. She takes another breath to make sure she can speak without hacking up half a lung and peers between them from under her wet forelock. “Yup, just dandy,” she replies, swallowing a cough. Her eyes flick to the male and she snorts. “No thanks to your Norns.”
Then her gaze moves beyond the red mare, and Þoka tests the blustery air again. Her legs are still shaky, her body utterly worn out, and much as she’d like to go running off into the proverbial sunset to find her friend, it’s not going to happen just yet. The blue mare shakes herself out again, and again peers between the two. “So you two know each other,” she states. “What is Atlantis, some sort of communal meeting place?” If that’s true, then it makes sense as to why he’d say start looking here. She almost feels gratitude toward the stallion—Björn, as the red mare addressed him—for guiding her away from what could have been a potentially hostile territory, but the emotion is laughed down, derided, and quashed immediately. Þoka is not so naïve. |