Desert

The fall of the cliffside into the sea had taken Faolain, and it should have killed her.

As the earth vanished from beneath her hooves, and she free-fell toward the churning ocean below, time seemed to slow. She watched the ground sink below her, tossing her like so many black feathers into the sky. Stones, dirt, grass, trees — all of it cleaved away from her beloved Ridge, and tumbled into the water, to be swallowed into the depths.

The great mass of earth left a hole in the ocean that yawned like the mouth of some great beast. Faolain knew her death, then; and she thought of Rivaini, who would have leaped down into that hole with her — and of Charybdis, whose truest love was for the sea. For the sea that was about to take the raven mare, wrap her up in a loving embrace, and send her hurtling down into the darkness with a little piece of her mountain home.

could be worse.

Faolain’s heart was in her throat, and so was her stomach, and her lungs, and everything else inside of her. She thought of Nycol, then, too, only briefly as the hungry blue hole rushed up to meet her. She had flung him off a cliff much shorter than this one, and now she would suffer the same fate. How… poetic. How fitting. To die the same death that she gifted to the cursed child of the Islands’ two cruelest individuals.

And what did that say about her?

SLAM.

—

There was no sound when Faolain awoke. She could feel the ocean lapping at her hooves, but she could not hear the sighing of water slipping along sand. Warmth ran down the side of her temple, across her forehead, soaking her forelock. And… silence.

At least, it was silent until she lifted her head. The waves, the breeze, the sound of sand sprinkling out of the ear that had just been pressed into the ground, all rushed suddenly in, and she pinned her ears in confusion. Her right ear was bleeding and silent, but her left one seemed fine. Had she ruptured an eardrum when she collided with the surface of the sea?

With a groan, Faolain rose to her hooves. The ribs on the right side of her body hurt like the devil, and she winced as she shook herself. The movement was a mistake, and a cry slipped unbidden from her open mouth, her eyes screwing shut with pain. At least her legs seemed to be working.

She didn’t know where she was. She tried to take a step, but her balance was terrible, and she staggered. It took a few ungraceful steps before she learned to at least anticipate the wooziness, and after a little while, she got used to it. It made her nauseous, and more than once she had to stop and close her eyes. But eventually, she made her way far enough into the Desert to get at least a decent idea of where she was.

Water, she thought, but before she could process the thought from a need into an actual plan, her left ear twitched as a gruff call rang out across the dusty landscape. It sounded about as rough as Faolain felt, and so she followed it, wondering if someone else had washed up here after the landslide. The heat from the sun weighed down on her black fur like a heavy cloak, and she felt as though she were walking through honey.

When she reached him, Faolain steeled herself, ready for the shock and emotion of running into him. Of all the people, of all the places, Rougaru.

Instead, she felt… nothing. The silver bay stallion looked better than she did, but not by much. Faolain was ragged, a dusty grey-black wraith of a mare, skin and bones. Bloody, stilted, limping.

Lost.

He looked lost, too.

“You,” she hissed, her voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper, lacking emotion, just… tired. She should have died — she was meant to die, thrown from the Ridge, swallowed by the sea. And yet, she was here, alive and faced with her enemy, and…

Tired.