She is lost in the details of his face, of the way the long places tapered into his chocolate-colored muzzle. The wind shifts and a lone strand of gold trails across the broad expanse of his forehead, fluttering in the hollow of his eye. Beneath the ridge of his brow lurked eyes so green they almost seemed neon in the limited light and she lay transfixed, her nostrils flaring subtly as she simply tried to absorb everything that was going on around her. Her senses felt assaulted as they all came online.
She could smell the coppery tang of blood in the air and on her body, mingled as it was with the salt on her skin. Beneath her body was the rich, earth musk of the damp mud her limbs pressed into, and beyond that was the crisp cool air of a spring night. She could smell him. A masculine musk that permeated their immediate surroundings. The scent brought feelings of both comfort and wariness with it, but she had little time to think of that. His voice was velvet in her ears, a rich baritone that thrummed in the night air. She felt like she could see the words hovering in the space between them, wiggling through the air and through her bones.
All of this is nothing compared to the heat of his moist breath as he comes close enough to breathe against her, and her body - so tightly compacted in breathless anticipation - shivers as the warmth of his touch overrides the tepid temperature of her own skin. Her eyes shutter closed in a desperate attempt to reduce the number of things that she needed to focus on, but even this doesn't necessarily help. It only makes her focus more closely on the way his lips skillfully manipulate the dirty strands of her mane as he examines her. She can feel even the slender stalks of his whiskers as they push into her sensitive skin, too small to be uncomfortable, but too insistent to be ignored.
It is only when he pulls away that she feels free to breathe again, the air exhaling in a plume that curls like pale smoke in the night air. Her eyelids lift again, but apart from a brief, nervous glance toward the candy-colored stallion, she trains her gaze on the floor once more, forcing her focus to the words that he offers.
Her confusion deepens as he tries to explain. She understands the words he utters, but their arrangement is perplexing. How did islands become lost? She wants to ask, if only because having some answers would be preferable to the white noise in her mind, but the confidence with which he utters their name makes her feel as though such a question would be childish. And while she does not know this man - his name, or where he's from, or even if he's safe to be around - she does not want him to think poorly of her.
His question hangs in the air with no true answer. Was she trying to come here? She wasn't entirely sure. The concept of "lost isles" was so foreign to her that she couldn't imagine that this had been her purpose, but then again, she couldn't craft any other explanation. She attempts to think back, to access any sort of reference point from her past, but nothing rises in her memory. Not where she is from or who she is. She does not know where she grew up or how she got here. Rae cannot picture any faces to fill in the empty photo album slots for mom or dad or siblings. A thread of wordless panic constricts in her chest and she offers a silent shake of her head in answer, although it is really no answer at all.
She shivers again, here gaze flicking blankly back and forth as she tried to sort through her memories. It was like flipping through a blank picture book. She knew, intrinsically, that there should be words and pictures in the album of her past, but nothing appeared. Rae understood there should be happy memories like learning to walk or racing across the land or swimming or chasing butterflies or tasting the rain. Her breathing quickens as the panic in her builds and she thrusts both forelegs out again, intending to try and rise to her feet when his last question thuds into her conscious.
"No," she finally offers after a long moment of anxious silence, her voice pitifully quiet in tandem with the tears that gathered in her eyes and clogged her throat. "I-I don't know who I am."
Rae turns her face away from the stallion, shame making the fur on her cheeks burn. She turns her attention to trying to stand again, unable to stomach staying prone and vulnerable for a singular moment longer. The effort to stand is not graceful, and in truth, if she could remember her own birth she would have likened it to the first time she attempted to stand. It is an effort of lurching upright and adjusting her weight from limb to trembling limb until she had attempted something that looked like standing. With limbs half splayed, she takes a deep breath, attempting to ignore the angry wasps that swarmed furiously in her mind.
From this vantage point, a few things become more clear. First, that the bruising and pain she had felt across her body was accompanied by scrapes and other scars. Second, she was thin and while it was perhaps not so thin as to be life-threatening, it was dramatic enough that her lips pursed in concern as she woozily eyed the protruding bones of her own hips. Beneath the wounds and the dirt and the salt, she did not seem to be old, although Rae could not pin down any particular number of years. Her body, apart from where the blood from her head wound trailed crustily down her body, was largely pale with freckles interspersed heavily throughout. She felt like a stranger in her own skin, and yet the limbs moved when she told them to, and her ribs expanded when she inhaled. This was undeniably her own body, but it felt foreign.
Helplessly she turned her gaze up to Rougaru, fear coloring the dark auburn depths. "What do I do?"
