There is so much to occupy him in the Lagoon. He has Cullen, and Fiero, and her, she of flame and oblivion, and between them and the others filtering like creeping mist around him he is never bored. He spends his days mostly sleeping, winding his lithe body beneath the canopy to avoid the worst of the summer’s soupy, crushing heat and dining on ripe citrus fruits. At night, he wanders, following the bevy of scent trails criss-crossing through his home. Some are old, barely a whisper, and some burn fresh and bright in his nose, rising high over waterlogged peat and rotten driftwood: stallion, different mares, blood and gore and sun-bleached bone and sea salt. A bouquet of various mysteries, ones whose threads he pulls at with nimble fingers, slowly untangling them under the crystalline blue light of the moon.

All of this - and yet, as the changing of the seasons looms closer and closer on the horizon, Khajiit finds himself pulled farther and farther away. The Marwari is an open-minded sort, and his appreciation for the prowess and the beauty of his brothers holds strong… but autumn’s approach draws his mind towards other pursuits. Hormones are a powerful influence; the idea of a mare’s perfume on his skin sweetens like honey with every day that passes, more and more tempting, and he finds himself leaving the borders of the bachelor lands with increasing regularity. The Lagoon might be paradise, but it sorely lacks in feminine options. The Meadow, however, is a treasure trove of potential. Women glitter in his periphery like jewels under the surface of the waves, half-buried in the sand and waiting for an enterprising soul like him to dig them up and admire them. Khajiit allows himself to get swept up in the undertow, following their siren calls.

But looking is not enough. The Crossing is much too crowded for him to do his finest work, with too many prying eyes. His eyes wander once again, his attention lapses - and then, when he stands one morning on the southmost shores of the Meadow, he finds it, an emerald rising out of the sea. The island teems with life, even from a distance. What kind of secrets might he unlock within its borders, he wonders? What adventures await his steady, searching hands?

Only one way to find out.

-

Compared to the chaos of his birth, the past few months in the Ridge had been relatively peaceful. The constant hum of various birds, insects, monkeys, and other fauna mixes with the shushing of broad waxen leaves, blending into white noise in the colt’s small ears. He has no shortage of playmates: the foals outnumber the adults here, a herd within a herd, comprising a wide spectrum of ages and colors and personalities. He enjoys his time with them: tiger-eyed Hades, prone to nipping just a bit too hard; bossy Roisin, the leader of the pack, as intimidating as she was awe-inspiring; pensive Kudzu, always tangled up in some plant or other; and the rest of the young souls that darted like sprites through the jungle. They helped him to lighten up, to blossom into the glowing soul he was meant to be.

The childrens’ efforts stuck out the most, but it was arguably the efforts of the mares in the Ridge that had most impacted him. He’d clung like a burr to his skull-faced angel at first, her inky-black coat and soft-curled ears soothing the fraying edges of his nerves, and though it had taken him some time, he’d grown to accept the love of all of them, in turn. Like a restless spirit he bounced about, leeching nourishment from those who had milk and affection from those who didn’t. Even the white-speckled woman - the one who had reminded him, in no small part, of his true dam, and had struck such terror in him initially - had won him over. When he wasn’t with the foals, he was with the mares: gamboling down the footpaths after Hades’ dam, trailing behind her on patrols; splashing in the lake with her lanky charcoal companion, watching the silvery scars on her sleek hide turn stark beneath the water; hunting colorful feathers and blooms and offering them, spellbound and hushed, to the tawny spotted mare who spoke in a language he didn’t understand and whose deep brown gaze seemed, more often than not, to be miles and miles away. Though the image of his ruby-red dam towering over him still lingered in his white-striped head, it had faded around the edges. Her features blurred; the memory of her scent dissipated into the ether like early-morning fog, and the insults she’d hurled at him muddled. He did not know himself as beast, or cursed, or wretched. Not anymore. Here, nurtured and cherished, nestled in the fertile grounds of Atlantis and beckoned to thrive, he was Asphodel, as much a part of the family as anyone else.

He knew their names, too - Nzingha, Charybdis, Siobhan, Rivaini, Faolain, and Çiçek. But to him, they were all Mother, in ways the one who’d created him would never, ever be.

How odd, then, that one afternoon, as Asphodel strolls in a rare moment of solitude down a tree-lined trail, he should stumble across someone else entirely, someone who stops him in his tracks and turns his molten eyes wide as saucers.

-

When Khajiit first stepped, dripping wet and shining like marble, from the embrace of the ocean, he’d been gobsmacked by the sheer size of the rainforest spanning before him. Everywhere he looked there was movement: all the shades of green he could think of and then some, captured in the form of leaves of assorted shapes and sizes, studded with flashes of saturated color. A barrage of scents washed over him, his dark ears swiveling to and fro at the symphony of noise coming from all directions. He didn’t know where to look first - down the pale white beach, along the turquoise water from whence he’d come? Up into the craggy peaks lurking like behemoths in the distance? No, he decides, blue eyes finding an opening in the trees. Quickly he makes his way towards it, the sand muffling his hoofbeats. Khajiit slips into the forest, stealthy as a jungle cat, and follows the first feminine scent he can pinpoint that isn’t stale. He can smell children, too - many of them - and though it slows his pace and makes him all the more careful to avoid detection, lest he surprise a protective dam, it also bolsters his resolve. With children come mares, mares with a proven, non zero chance of accepting a man’s company. Already he considers his odds better than he’d had on the Crossing. A small smile graces his lips; as he strides through the underbrush, near the path but not directly upon it, a flash of something glimmers just ahead. Khajiit pauses; his nostrils flare, and when he discerns it is no mare he’s found, but a foal, his curving ears tick back.

Soon, though, his frustration fades. This is not the path he’d have chosen - if the Marwari had his way, the women would have been waiting for him on the beach, eager and ready for his attention - but this is what he was given. Khajiit is not one to give up when faced with what some might call a dead end; he’d been led down so many of those in his life, more than he could count. What he’d learned was that nothing, save the cold, final embrace of death, was permanent; that the end of one road could become the start of another, and that sometimes you had to make it yourself, despite the voices behind you begging to differ. Khajiit takes this new path before him with aplomb, quickening his pace, and when he emerges like a ghost before the white-speckled colt, his blue eyes glitter with unspoken mischief.

“Hey, kid,” Khajiit says to Asphodel, calm as the cloudless sky far above. The child stares, transfixed, at him, and for a moment they stand in silence, sizing each other up.

The stallion shifts his weight back, projecting a masterfully-crafted certainty. “Your dam sent me,” he adds, as if he truly believes the words flowing freely like crisp, cool water from between his parted lips. “She needs you.”

Asphodel champs his teeth, wary, and says nothing.

Khajiit takes a step forward, lowering his elegant head in a gesture of appeasement. “Come along, boy,” he bids, gesturing with his pastel-pink muzzle to the narrow route from whence he’d made his appearance. “We must go, and quickly. There’s not much time.”

Asphodel studies him. He has so little experience with stallions, and though Rivaini-Mother is a strong, sturdily-built mare, she smells of mother’s milk and sweet blooms. The stallion’s musk floods his senses, drumming up his heartbeat, but when the boy notices the black ears sitting atop his poll, his fear melts into intrigue. He has ears like her, the only one besides his Nzingha-Mother to have them twist inward, forming a corona where their tips join together. He is so like his pale-faced seraph, so similar and yet so different, they had to have been cut from the same cloth. “Are you an angel?” the palomino asks, his voice barely raising above a reverent whisper.

Khajiit smiles.

“Of a sort,” he offers, taking another step forward. His tail swishes impatiently behind him, snapping just a bit too hard against his hocks. His borrowed time runs short; it’s only so long, now, before he is discovered, and he has to find an excuse for his extremely unannounced intrusion. “Now come.”

Entranced, Asphodel finally gives in, and moves to close the distance between them.