Common

Some things were simple enough. The swim here from Luma's homeland, for example: certainly not an easy feat, but very simple. Keep moving. Don't drown. Look for land with water and plant life to graze on. She had come across a half-sunken, rocky islet to the west, but it wouldn't have supported horses in the long term, and so she had moved on. That had been a simple decision too. She hadn't had to think, only rest and gather her strength to plunge back into the sea.

Now that she had found suitable land, though, that simplicity and direction was gone. What now? What was she to do, so far from a home was no longer home? Watching dark spots move about on the meadow just a little ways beyond those rocky hills that marked the boundary between the beach and real land, Luma was suddenly acutely aware of a yawning emptiness by her side. Someone who should have been there wasn't. Someone she'd spent nearly her entire life with, had done nearly everything together with, had not come here with her.

Her best friend had told her to leave. And then she had died.

And now Luma was here, alone, feeling very much like some traveler mired in the middle of nowhere with no map or compass to guide them. If said map and compass was also the traveler's friend and if maps and compasses could die, which is where the analogy falls apart a little.

Well, she was hungry. That was something to focus on, something she could act on and fix. Better than having a full belly and nothing to do except stare at the horizon and think. Blinking away droplets of seawater, Luma drifted to the open meadow, lowering her head to graze when the substrate beneath her hooves changed from sand to lush spring grass. She let her mind focus on the act of grazing and the warm afternoon light on her back, but the cursed thing kept wanting to drift back to the one thought that hurt the most: Rhyme.

Rhyme.

Luma wasn't so sure that the gnawing ache inside was entirely hunger after all.