bad omens around the eyes;
The ear that was deaf from her fall was not silent. Blood trickled out of it, and whispers trickled in. No particular voice belonged to the whispers, and she could only catch a few words here and there; they were otherwise unintelligible, nonsense. They swelled and receded like waves, and Faolain wondered if the ocean was trying to speak to her, or if she was maybe just going mad.
Back off, mare.
Faolain flinched. The woman had come up on her deaf side, and while she had been vaguely aware of her approach from the vibrations in earth and the (fainter, and harder to pinpoint, but still there) hoofbeats in her hearing ear, Faolain had somehow not been prepared for her to speak. Her proud, chiseled head rose briefly in defiance, but the black wraith was in no position to rebel against the spotted queen’s command. Her amber eyes narrowed suspiciously at Titania, but then Faolain shifted out of her way, gaze slipping between her and Rougaru.
Rougaru.
The ragged stallion did not seem to comprehend Faolain’s presence until the Desert mare addressed her. She was first brushed aside, and then spoken to a little more gently, which caused Faolain’s attention to shift back to her curiously. An oasis, she thought. Her dark ears flicked back in thought, and she chewed on the possible paths she could choose to take here. She could destroy herself trying to fight both Rougaru and a healthy, un-ravaged-by-the-elements mare; she could stand here and watch justice finally catch up to Rougaru; or she could walk away.
Faolain was dying.
There was no question that she would not survive a fight, but even standing here, beneath the punishing sun and the wind so dry that it crackled, she felt she might crumble any moment. The Ridge had not killed her, but the Desert would.
The Ridge will not kill me, but I am dead outside of it.
Stiffly, Faolain turned North. Her life was drifting away from her like steam off a lake in the early morning. She clung to it, desperately, as she left Titania and Rougaru behind.
The oasis Titania had sent her to was close enough that she could still faintly see the shapes of Rougaru and his new captor. She slid into the tepid water, and then folded into it, her knees disrupting the soft sand at the bottom and the water rising to her throat. Half of her was in the sun, the other half in the shade, and she found the water beneath the shade to be much cooler and revitalizing. Faolain pushed herself weakly with legs that remained mostly curled beneath her until she lay wholly in the shadows, her head resting on a stone that protruded into the water, mane and tail floating in an inky black halo around her.
She slept.
