Common

It was a little surreal to consider that Iscariot was standing in a place so unfamiliar, conversing with one of his kind whose name he did not yet know. The cream colored stallion had spent so much of his life being coddled by his sibling, surrounded by the familiar and unremarkable faces he’d always known. By comparison, the slender figure of the Akhal-Teke seemed odd to his gaze - were her ribs meant to form such ripples in her raven-black coat, or was she malnourished? The perlino’s own figure (as well as those he had been accustomed to seeing) was broader, with well-defined musculature and a wide chest. By his eye, he was also taller than the dark mare - not an entirely new experience to Iscariot, but Rivaini had been close enough to his height so that it made little difference. In this company, he felt almost like a giant - a crippled giant, to be sure, but still one who might have been capable of crushing those whose company he shared.

The realization that he might hold such power was a little heady, actually.

Not that the almost-white male would have dreamed of doing physical harm to another creature. While his age-mates had been sparring, squealing, and kicking, Iscariot had contented himself in other pursuits. The fact that he couldn’t keep up with the other colts was only a small piece of the puzzle - the reality was that Iscariot had always seemed to lack the fight half of their kind’s fight-or-flight instinct. When faced with the occasional mockery or bullying of the others in his herd, his reaction was typically to listen to it in silence and offer no reaction to his tormentors. In time, the behavior stopped as his aggressors learned that there was no fun to be had in it. Some even developed a grudging respect for the boy’s stoicism, though that regard stopped short of them offering any sort of friendship to him.

Iscariot drew heavily from that experience repressing his emotions as his ears tipped forward to listen to the black mare’s inquiry. Of course, his expression was not so much cold like his father's had always been as it was simply calm and unconcerned - as if nothing could touch him, not even the past that he’d sought so desperately to escape. "I suppose that remains to be seen,” he replied somewhat evasively, in an effort to conceal the sea of uncertainty that threatened to drown him. Thoughts of the future were frightening; he much preferred to focus on the present and so listened eagerly as his acquaintance introduced herself.

"Faolain..." He tasted the name briefly on his pink lips, liking the way it felt as he uttered it. It flowed much the same as the names in his homeland, though the -n ending was generally reserved for masculine names. Given the strength she clearly possessed, however, her name seemed more apt than his own. Iscariot. Traitor. That was the meaning of the name he'd been given; that was how little he'd been valued by those who had brought him into being. Truth be told, Iscariot was tempted by the idea of shedding the last reminder of this implacable truth - but it was also the last piece of his previous self that he held. And the last piece of Rivaini, who had always spoken it endearingly.

Letting go - as it turned out - was not quite so easy as it sounded.

Holding on was far easier. So even after Faolain expressed skepticism in her ability to help him, the perlino stallion clung to the hope that perhaps she still could. "But if you are new to this land as well, you must remember where it was that you arrived!" Iscariot stumbled over his own words, in a hurry to speak them and perhaps get that much closer to reuniting with his sibling. "And if it wasn't here, then perhaps Rivaini arrived at the same place that you did." He was grasping, but actually not far from the events that had already unfolded. Little did he know that Rivaini had arrived on this same island hours ago, though much further north along the same shore.

Whether or not he believed in fate did not seem to matter; the Moirai meddled in his affairs with impunity.