Green, green, and more green. It seemed almost fantastical, implausible, for so much of it to be located in one spot. Though she’d looked mere moments ago, Kore couldn’t help but look out at it all once more. How did the natives keep from gorging themselves? Even with all of Demeter’s tireless work, Nysa had
never looked like this. An oasis, after all, was only made so because of the desert surrounding it. Bounty not borne of hardship would never get the appreciation it deserved. Confidence meant nothing without fear. Life without death was merely existence.
Kore had known fear, and as a movement caught her eye from below, its familiar crawling fingers traced their way along her spine. A stranger, golden as the sands of her homeland and dipped in black, seemed to be coming directly towards her, and for a moment her blood ran cold and her heart grew still. She could not see his face from far away, but the leanness of his shape, the way he glimmered in the light of the sun, capturing it… It reminded her of someone, someone who had taught her, whether she’d wanted to learn or not, the true meaning of fear. Phoebus Apollo, she thought to herself, not daring to speak his name aloud. Bright as the rays of Helios, hard to look at, and just as capable of burning you, should you dare to come too close. Impossible.
I thought I’d taken care of you.
If she had truly died and come to Elysium, surely Apollo would not have been let in. Not after everything he’d done. Kore narrowed her eyes, focusing on the stranger as he approached and quelling the voice within her that whispered, soft as the beat of butterfly wings, that perhaps she would not have been admitted, either. Perhaps eternity with him was her own form of cruel punishment.
After what felt like an eternity - but must have been, truly, only a few moments - the stallion was within speaking distance, and one look at his slender form told the mare that he was not who she’d anticipated. Though he had the slender, sinewy build of a desert-dweller, he was not thick with muscle as Phoebus had been, and he had the presence of mind to keep a respectful distance instead of barging into her space to take whatever he wanted. He spoke, and her suspicions about his origins proved right, though he seemed much more comfortable even in this endless oasis, far from his own home. Kore had kept her gaze trained on the horizon, but now she felt his eyes upon her, and turned her head to meet them, taking care to keep her expression calm as still water.
“This place puzzles me,” she admitted, breaking eye contact to look back out over the hills. “I’ve never seen an oasis so big.” She had been moving South for days and still had yet to find the end of it, save for the thin strips of beach bordering the sea. The mare knew she should be grateful for the abundance, appreciative… but it was too much. It felt like a trick.
With a snort, Kore looked at him once more. Her dark eyes were the only bits of her betraying the deluge of questions threatening to bubble out of her like seafoam. “You seem to know your way around. These Dunes, your Dunes, are they what comes after all of this?” She should have known better to trust a stranger - Demeter’s warnings about men, based in truth and hard-gotten experience, echoed in her mind. In her thirst for answers, she pushed it away. He seemed like he had what she wanted, and in a land full of strangers, he held the promise of familiarity, of understanding. She wanted to know what he knew.
“Will you show me?” Manners, Kore. “Please.”