She was not alone for long. Miriella blinked tears off her long lashes and lifted her slim, slender neck to glance toward the moving figure down the shoreline. Though he was a little ways off to start, Miriella could immediately see how much larger he was than any horse she had yet to know. No one in the Prairie was so tall, nor so thickly packed in muscle. A shiver rushed down her spine - a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and fear - and Miriella lashed her blond tail against her narrow hips. She had the build of her mother and of her father’s father, arabian influenced with a light-carriage, her face even slightly dished. Her blue eyes were large and, with the soft sheen of moisture from her tears glistening in them, they seemed even larger.
Miriella did not cry often, if at all, and having a stranger come across her after there was a small crack in her foundation made her feel somewhat embarrassed. She dropped her face to try and rub her eyes along her knee, hoping to wipe away some of the evidence before he approached.
He was even larger when he was closer, and as Miriella lifted her bold-white face to look up at him she found herself slightly taken aback with awe. The first words he said, immediately noting she wasn’t on the island, made her feel even smaller. As if he knew it all just by that fact alone, that Miriella shouldn’t be here alone, and he would tell her to go back to the Prairie. Of course, there was no knowing any of that and, when he asked where she came from, she knew she could stop her paranoia.
Her first thought was to lie. She could say she was from a different island entirely. Make anything up.
But, “The Prairie,” came softly from her mouth instead. Miriella wasn’t usually demure, though there was something about the large stallion’s presence that hushed her. She admitted, “I wanted to see the Atlantis parrots.” Her father had told her about them, and he’d often told her he always wanted to take her mother to see them. Miriella’s mother had loved birds - it was the only thing she could really remember about her - and so, in turn, Miriella had a fascination with them too. Sometimes she wondered if her father had brought her mother to see the parrots, maybe Ethra wouldn’t have left the islands. It was a silly thought, a child’s thought, but it remained stuck in her mind all the same.
“I’m Miriella,” she introduced herself, stepping out of the rising tide that now brushed her foreleg with the rising waves. She drew closer to him and stretched her neck, offering her nose to exchange a few deep breaths, taking in his masculine scent and feeling confused by how invigorated it made her feel.
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