Common

The heavens were clouded, and she circled, stagnant as water unaffected by the moon. But then, just when Charybdis began to fear that her wanderings in this shrouded, frozen landscape would pass as idly as the days she’d spent reacquainting herself with the Ridge, she heard a shuffle of hooves, and a voice calling out to her.

Even as she squinted through the fog, her good eye eventually making out a silhouette, Charybdis couldn’t hold back the soft chuckle that bubbled up her throat. The odd mare somehow wasn’t surprised. Now it all made sense - why, after many attempts to leave Atlantis (after the currents had caught hold of her when she’d been making for Luthien), she’d found herself at the mercy of the ocean the first time she stood in the waters without the intention of departure on her mind.

The Ridge had relinquished its hold on Charybdis and the ocean had delivered her here, to this time and this place. Not so that she could resume her wayward wandering, but so that she could bring someone back when she returned.

“Oh, I know de way, youngling,” the white mare murmured huskily as she drifted nearer. “But de knowing is only de beginning of a journey.” Enigmatic as she might seem, the older mare with salt-crystals instead of snowflakes glinting in the knotted tangles of her two-tone mane found the stranger before her to be a conundrum in her own way.

“What is it you want of de Ridge?” the red-shouldered mare asked, not unkindly but with genuine interest, alert and attentive to whatever answer the younger mare deigned to give her. In truth, subconsciously, Charybdis would seek to discern a deeper meaning from anything the frosted gold mare offered, because more than anything else, she wanted to discover what it was that the Ridge wanted of this bright eyed stranger. The territory she called home was shrouded in mystery, and the half-blind mare hoped that learning of what significance it held to this girl would bring her a little closer to understanding that which yet lay ahead for herself.