TEXT In the empty whiteness, there is a peace that Sonorae has sorely craved. The world is both so quiet and so loud in this moment that the incessant whisper of her doubts is inaudible, and the everpresent fear can only scrabble at the edges of her mind without actually taking hold. She knows that she is dying, but it is a far off sort of knowledge, a thought that comes without any sort of anxiety or stress.
She has waited for this day.
It is not that Sonorae has ever been suicidal. She's been afraid and sad and lonely, but always and forever hopeful that Rougaru would come back for her. It was only when this certainty had begun to waver that she had lost her grip on the world around her. Watching Rougaru swim away with Shiloh had broken something inside of her, and that broken gear had continued to bounce freely around her heart and mind, wreaking havoc wherever it touched.
But in this moment, in this light, she sensed a peace she hadn't held since she'd welcomed Roux into the world beneath Rougaru's loving gaze. A promise of a better future, one without the heartbreak and pain she'd grown accustomed to.
She reached for it, stretching shakily toward the light, only for the bubble of her peace to pop like a bubble the moment her lips skimmed the limb of the horse in front of her. Her eyes opened in surprise, only to slam shut again a moment later as the brightness of the world made her wince. Her head throbbed, her throat burned, and every bone and muscle in her body ached with the effort of fleeing... well, she wasn't quite sure what she had been fleeing now. Only that she had been, and the physical memory of that danger - of the lingering adrenaline and the acrid taste of her fear - roused her the rest of the way.
Her pale nostrils flared as she took in the scent of the two strangers that stood before her, one that wore a concerned expression and another who wore a mask of emotions that were too intense for her to explore. She looked away from him, uncertain what would have caused him to look at her like that, and let her gaze rest on the painted stallion instead, a question written in her eyes.
She opened her mouth to speak, but her first attempt was too raspy and whisper-quiet to be heard by anyone over the ocean. She cleared her throat - wincing at the lingering pain - and tried again. "Wh-... Where am I?"
None of this area looked familiar to her. The trees, the shore, the skyline. Hell, even the two stallions in front of her were strangers in her current state. She felt like an alien, transplanted into a world that she only barely understood, desperately trying to make sense of her surroundings.
Although she had not looked at the chocolate stallion again since rousing, she did so now, belatedly realizing that he'd already said her name. She didn't understand why looking at him filled her with such a confusing tangle of emotions - fear and love and betrayal and anger - but he did, and it made her uneasy. Given the few things she knew - that she had been running, and that he made her heart beat double time - made him just as suspicious as it did trustworthy. "Do you... know... me?" She asked hesitantly, confusion in every syllable. She searched her mind for recognition, but came back empty. Not just of who this man was, or why he would know her, but of who she was, or why she was here, or how she'd gotten here.
Though Rae could not remember, this was an echo of her first meeting with Rougaru all over again, albeit with a healthy tangle of complicated emotions, and a second stallion to pick from. The panic slammed back into her, no longer muted by her near-death state. Her soft brown eyes went wide and round as she clumsily tried to get to her feet, scrabbling furiously against the soft sandy bottom, likely kicking the silver-maned stallion closest to her.
"No, no, no," she sobbed under her breath, rushing away from both of them to clamber awkwardly up the beach, only to freeze when she remembered that she didn't know where to go. She didn't have a home, or at least, she couldn't remember where it was if she did. Her skin shivered in the brisk breeze and she swallowed hard at the realization that she couldn't afford to run off. With no where to go and no one to look after her while she recovered, she was as apt to run straight into more danger as she was to find any kind of support.
These two stallions - while largely unknown to her - had at least already attempted to rescue her. That had to count for something, right? Surely they were not all bad. She pivoted in place, casting her gaze awkwardly between both of them, wishing she were anyone else. "Who are you?" She addressed both of them equally, her gaze skimming briefly over their faces before settling on the shoreline in front of her hooves as the water lapped at them, it's rhythm unaltered by her panic.
