“You cannot know any water, truly, by de surface,” Charybdis found herself saying breathlessly as Drogon drew level with her. It was the beginning of an answer to his question, but before she could elaborate further, (not noticing the falter in his step) she felt the featherlight brush of Drogon’s muzzle across her flank, and it flooded her with a fire that sent her surging forwards, racing through the only home she had known here ever more recklessly.
“But more den any kind, I have found rivers to be de most intriguing!” she called as they ran. Glancing back over her right shoulder to catch sight of him, the white mare toss her head, and veered sharply to the left down a shrouded trail, her strides long and confident. Moments later, she slowed, and came to an abrupt stop, sides heaving as her lungs hungered for air after the mad dash she had led Drogon on.

“Where dey seem still on de surface, dey run deep and swift,” Charybdis murmured, once her breathing had evened out a little. And she gestured with a tip of her pale muzzle, guiding the stallion’s attention to a riverbend just ahead of them, silently cutting its way through the darkness of the deep jungle. “No river will ever be as powerful as de ocean, but when de rains come, dey are mighty and terrifying t’ings to behold.” Briefly, she considered asking if Drogo had ever witnessed a river in flood, bursting its banks and hungrily sweeping away everything that was close to it. In the end, she remained silent, content with whatever silence or speaking the male deigned to give her.

Minutes later, with Charybdis ambling alongside the winding river, Drogon beside her, she found herself speaking again, to distract her mind from the dark and dangerous thoughts that were taking root. Continuing where she’d left off, Charybdis found herself latching back onto the question he’d asked of her, and resumed her long-winded, cryptic answer. “Dey are adaptable, and no less adept at carving t’rough stone. If any’ting, de rivers are far more cunning.”

Here, again, she paused in her wandering, but this time, did not point anything in particular out, allowing, instead, Drogon to study the course of the river, or the vegetation that grew wild around them, in his own time and as he wished. A thin, watery smile painted itself across the mare’s pink lips. “Lead you to places you do not expect.” The words were little more than a whisper, and as soon as they drifted away and were lost amongst the muffled sounds of the jungle, Charybdis gave her head a light shake, and moved on, cutting across in front of Drogon and altering his course with the weight of her shoulder pressed momentarily to his chest.

This time, the path Charybdis walked seemed haphazard, and she weaved her way through leaves and vines as though she were lost. But lost was the last thing she was, now that Drogon followed in her wake. “Move so silent, you cannot know dey are dere until you find yourself on de sloping bank,” came the murmur that broke the rainforest-silence, and Charybdis cast a meaningful look behind, back to the riverbend they had first happened upon. And then her gaze shifted, ever so slightly, so that she was o longer looking past Drogon, or through him, but right at him, with a bright sort of clarity in both her eyes. As though, in that moment, he was all she could see.

As though, in all the wild and rugged expanse of her home - full of danger and beauty - he was the only thing worth looking at.

But then the moment passed, and with a gentle snort, Charybdis beckoned him on. Not too far, just a dozen or so paces. She spoke softly under her breath as she carefully picked her way, each step slow and considered, now. “Oder times dey beckon you wit’ indistinct voices. Lead you astray…” And they stopped, the Ridge guardian falling silent so that they could both listen to the whisper of water running over rocks. There, hidden beneath the evergreen leaves of a sprawling monstera growing low to the ground around their legs, a silver trickle of water, so far from the water source, doggedly attempting to cut a new waterway through the Ridge that, in generations to come, may grow to become a branch of the mother river.

Charybdis turned back to the north, and silently continued on, drawing Drogon ever deeper into the Ridge, heading for the very heart of it. And now, finally, they were coming to the close, and Drogon’s patience was rewarded with information that, while still ambiguous in nature, was far more direct and clearly related to what he wanted to know. In a way. “De rivers always hide, always show different sides of dere nature. But sometimes I see dem -” the breath hitched in the red-patched mare’s throat as a flicker of black and white was visible through the thick jungle vegetation, there-and-gone, with hardly a sound. Charybdis fell still, and then slowly turned her wide blue (and blue-grey) gaze to seek for Drogon’s attention. The question on her twisted lips went unspoken, but it was there, in the very depths of her strange eyes.

“I know where dey come from, and where dey are going,” she breathed, and then, a lull in the wind in the canopy high above, and a temporary cessation of birdsong reveal some other sound carried on the humid air of Atlantis that had been masked, moments before. “De heart of dem is not so different from de ocean,”Charybdis said by way of explanation, something sparking in her eyes. She prowled ahead, in the direction she’d heard that soft, enticing hiss that was ever so familiar. The trees thinned, and the ground adopted a gentle upward slope.

Suddenly, they broke free from the shadows of the jungle, and stood at the base of the jagged spine of mountains by which the islanders knew and named this territory. And there, tumbling down the sheer verdant rockface, a torrent of water that was fed by a wellspring in the heights. From the mountain, it ran southeast, and its watercourse ran all the way through the Harbour.

Charybdis knew that the river would reach the sea, eventually, but she had never left the Ridge to seek out the estuary she knew must be somewhere along the eastern shoreline of Atlantis. She didn’t feel it was right of her, to be blessed with the knowledge and sight of such a place.

Choosing to stand in silence now, Charybdis let the hiss of the waterfall wash over her. Even at this distance, there was a mighty force to it that filled her with awe.The raw, natural power of it stole her breath away still, even though she’d come here so many times before. But, for the first time, the rise and fall of the roar of crashing water seemed to echo the sound of the ocean waves she loved so much.

Closing her eyes, Charybdis heard the rush of water get drowned out by the beating of her heart, and when she opened her eyes, and saw him properly by the light of day, the thrumming in her mind was all she could hear. “I have only ever walked dese trails alone, never wit’ anyone.” Charybdis turned to Drogon to offer this quiet admission, and the thundering inside her all but deafened her own ears to the words, so that all the half-blind mare couldn’t tell if she’d spoken aloud. All she had left was the feeling of how much it meant to her that he had followed her all this way without once turning aside from her even for a moment.