Falls

Kore steps with practiced ease from the cool embrace of the sea. The ocean still scares her, still drums up her pulse and quickens her breath, but after having crossed between Islands so many times, its blue-grey depths seem less terrifying. She knows the power lurking under her as she swims, the potential for great and terrible harm… but it doesn’t send her flying in the opposite direction anymore. After living in shadows for so long, Kore has learned not to run from them, but to stare openly into the yawning mouth of darkness and wait expectantly for it to stare back.

The Hills had been good for that. The Arabian hadn’t spent long there - no more than a few weeks, maybe - but after her first initial run-in with the scarred black ‘Teke, she’d not seen another living soul. There were whispers of it: scent trails on the wind, faded hoofprints in the dirt, a strand of pale mane caught on a bramble… Hints of others, not nearly as many as had been in the Dunes or the Crossing, and certainly not visual confirmation thereof. The land stretched out before her, barren like the rest of Salem, rolling on and on until the short scrub grass faded into the horizon. Time passed strangely, the hours fading into days, the sun and the moon’s endless chase blending together into one muddy stretch.

With so few corporeal beings to occupy her, it was no wonder, then, that the ghosts of the past would rise to fill the empty spaces.

Maslakhat was the one to plague her the most often, flashes of his golden hide lingering in her periphery right up until she swerved her small body around to meet him - and found nothing. She knew he was close; there’d been a time, when she’d first arrived, that she crested one of the steeper slopes and saw sand in the distance. If the breeze was right, and she’d wandered too close to the border, she could still catch his scent, scalding her senses like venom. No matter how she clung to the dips between the hilltops, or traveled by deep shadow, the idea of him perched atop his gilded throne, following her every movement… it made her shudder harder than any frigid winter wind ever could.

When it wasn’t Maslakhat, it was someone else entirely - someone with eyes like twin suns set in black ice, a voice that rolled like thunder over her and worked out the tension she’d held in herself for as long as she could remember. Someone whose scent faded faster the harder she searched for it, dashing her hopes of finding him here to smithereens. As the time passed, her heart sank further and further, tugged below the rising tide of her anxiety. She doubted the ruler of the Dunes would come for her, or even notice her presence on Salem - but the possibility of it, and the knowledge that there would be nobody here to save her if he did decide to bring her to heel… eventually, it grew unbearable.

This time, at least, it was easy. This time, Kore knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was nothing left for her on this arid, desolate lump of an Island. The Crossing had its own challenges, to be fair, but it also had rivers, and lakes, and waterfalls, and roving herds of deer and elk. It had hot summer days, colorful spring mornings, winter snows, and - now that the seasons had turned and it was autumn once again - a rainbow of shifting leaves, reds and golds and oranges swirling around like jewels in the crisp, shining light. It had the place where, nearly a year gone by, she’d spent an evening wrapped in the embrace of one who’d come to mean so much to her. It had Libera, and Virgo, and the forest where the three of them had learned to care for each other, and to accept care in return. It had all of these things - and so, to her, it was worth returning to, even if Aidoneus wasn’t one of them.

Still, as Kore shakes the excess saltwater from her sleek mahogany coat and continues up the coast, she finds herself following a familiar route. Before she knows it, night falls around her, illuminating her path with millions of tiny sparkling stars. She walks slowly, losing herself in the sound of the waves at her right and the rustling of the trees in the wind at her left, until something inside her beckons her to stop. Kore resurfaces - and not a moment too soon, for her wanderings have taken her, as before, to the place where she has found him time and time again, like planets drawn together in orbit.

His scent washes over her, fresh and bright and strong. She smiles.

Her eyes drift along the treeline, searching the gloom. At first it looks like it always does, empty of anything interesting - but then she sees them: strands of long, thick hair snatching scraps of moonlight as the breeze pushes them back. A powerful form taking even, solemn breaths. A gaze that still sends her heart aflutter looking out to sea, looking out to Salem. Looking out for her. Waiting for her in what she can only describe, now, as their spot. Waiting, as they’d done for each other many times over.

She wouldn’t make him wait a moment longer.

From the moment she spots Aidoneus her pace quickens, the languid walk turning first to a trot, then a canter, then a gallop, her white-streaked tail streaming like a flag behind her. Kore whinnies, her high voice surging ahead towards him. She’s there in less than a minute, scattering grains of sand in tiny pearls as she stops just in front of him. “Aidoneus,” she sighs, the sound of her panting breath filling the silence between her words. “I - you - I thought you were -”

Before she can think twice, she closes the distance between them, stretching her muzzle to brush her lips against his. Maybe it’s the season, or the sheer, awestruck novelty of seeing him again, so close, tangible, touchable, after only getting pieces of him from afar, but she doesn’t draw back like she normally would, moving instead to trace over his broad cheek and along the thick cords of his neck. Kore envelops herself in his scent, her damp coat soaking up the warmth of him like a sponge.

She presses forward until she can’t anymore, until her breast brushes against his own and her neck lays along the line of his withers. The mare lingers there a minute or two, though it feels like forever. When she finds her voice again, it tries to be teasing, but no amount of lighthearted banter could mask the glimmering emotion sewn like precious gems between every syllable.

“I was so worried about you,” Kore murmurs into his skin, vowing never to let him out of her sight ever again.