She remembered, now, why she had left. The great, sprawling jungle that draped across the eponymous crags for which the islanders named this place… For one who lingered always at the edge of the ocean, with the sky wide open above her and the horizon line always in sight, the dense tropical forest terrified her, the way it loomed close on every side. Branches and vines even reached down from overhead, crowding out all light, shrouding her in verdant shadow.

Once upon a time, she’d had the courage, but she felt stripped of her strength now, was weary down to her bones. The darkness she dreamed of - it weighed heavily on her, and here, in this place that she loved, she felt it most strongly. It suffocated her. But on the days when she felt brave, she’d leave her beloved ocean and allow the jungle of Atlantis to swallow her, driven by the need to find anyone from before. But aside from the fire-and-snow stallion who held the names of Faolain and the son of her other-half on his tongue, she found none. Not even her river children (though she swore she glimpsed them from the corner of her eye in the deepest parts of the Ridge, near to the heart of the territory, where the mountains loomed, all cloaked in green).

Fritjof and his herd were to the southwest, and to the southeast, the Harbour, who’s custodian she had yet to meet. There had been no trouble from the southern part of the isle, the place that was called Paradise, where wolves were said to roam in great abundance, wolves that didn’t seem like wolves. In this way, Charybdis resonated with the place she’d become bound to; the both of them stood empty.

And it was more than just the physical loneliness. Though seasons had turned since Skylla’s passing, time had not yet softened the sting of the loss. If anything, it had only made it worse. That she had already lost Skylla twice before (in other ways), only served to deepen her anguish, so that the white mare would often find her face wet with tears, not having realised she’d started crying. But there was another loss, one, perhaps not as permanent as Skylla’s (though with every day that passed, Charybdis became more and more convinced that she’d never see the white-faced shaman again), but it cut even deeper, in a way that Charybdis couldn’t begin to explain.

The salt-rimed mare felt unable to do anything about it, no way forward that either of her eyes could see, to help her heal more swiftly. The worst part; in all her wallowing in solitude and withdrawing ever deeper into herself, the more she began to doubt everything that had once mattered to her. Even in the years before she and Skylla had first come to the islands, many had thought her mad, but that Charybdis had clutched all of her convictions close, guarded them as fiercely as she guarded her heart.

But everything was slipping away from her, like the tide. This deep in the jungle, finding herself walking the same twisting trails over and over again, having lost her way, Charybdis knew that, sooner or later she’d have to piece together the puzzle that she had become (that she always had been). Who else remained that remembered all those who’d walked this land - Faolain, Hades, her Eidolon, the Rivers, Skylla - but her?