For a time, Charybdis is content just to drift in the wake of Faolain, present but not entirely there, finding peace in the stillness, blind and seeing eye caught up watching the clouded heavens above them. The clouds; their colour, their form, their movement, the thinning and eddying of them tell Charybdis many things, and her pale lips twitch as she silently speaks back to them, even as snippets of conversation of a far less outlandish nature wash over her consciousness like waves.
The washed-out mare sees water in everything her eye beholds, feels an ever-tenuous connection to it in every aspect of life.
Even by the way she rocks ever so gently is reminiscent of the swelling sea tides, or, to a lesser extent, the way even the thinnest trickling stream ripples its way over and around all obstacles in its path. In one instant, she is adrift and apart, but in the very next, the dark mare beside her becomes as a moon to her, drawing her with a kind of gravity. Or maybe it’s just water again, still water, and Charybdis is naught but a ghostly reflection of Faolain in the way she mirrors her.
Understanding flickers in the bedraggled mare’s eyes, and her face creases with the knowledge, for she knows, she knows what it is like to fight and to lose, to be hurt, and to have ones taken. In the end, the manner of the loss doesn’t really matter at all. But Faolain breathes hope, and the stallion, Fearghas, clearly carries some of it with him so that he is not alone in his search. Charybdis searches for words to speak, wanting to acknowledge out loud the trials Faolain and Fearghas have shared, but it is as though her mind is clouded, the way the tumbling surf churns up sand and muddies the breakers.
Charybdis senses nothing is expected of her, and grateful for this, she wallows in her silence a while longer, sifting through the slurry of her thoughts while Faolain returns her attention to the stallion. It is only in the wake of the dark mare’s offer of encouragement and optimism that the red-brown shouldered mare finds her voice again. “Fearghas,” she calls, even as the stallion takes his leave, and she turns to him, lifting her chin and shaking the salt-tangled forelock from her view, even as it falls to shroud her face. “Water, it ‘ave a way of bringing back dat which seem lost to you. Be safe, and don't lose sight of de horizon.”
He flows steadily away from them, and as the rain finally relents entirely, Charybdis follows along beside Faolain. She takes in fresh water, and is renewed. After a short time spent resting with eyes closed, Charybdis stirs, and seeks the shadow-mare’s gaze. “De sea, she be quiet now. I am ready, Faolain, I will follow you as we swim for dis Ridge of yours.” And as they walk into the water together, Charybdis allows her grief to pour from her truly, silently giving over her tears to the tide that bears her towards the isle that glistens like an emerald in the blue.
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