Encelia was a quiet girl. A solitary girl.
Being raised by a mother who just barely tolerated her presence had shaped her; watching her mother dote lovingly over her younger brother had broken her heart. Rather than turn to anger, Encelia looked inward and wondered what it could have been that was so wrong with her, but not with her brother. Eventually a night had come where her mother pulled her aside and apologized for how she had treated her, explained traumatic events she’d barely escaped from before she’d returned to the islands, and how temporary she had assumed her stay in the Badlands was going to be. Encelia’s arrival had been ill-timed, but it was no fault of Encelia’s. The blame, her mother admitted, belonged only to her for the way she had treated Encelia.
Encelia had not doubted her, but somehow learning the truth didn’t actually help lessen the sting. Every fact still remained that her mother had never wanted her to begin with. The truth was the truth. Encelia had never been wanted. Because of her very existence, Klara had stayed longer in the Badlands than intended. If Encelia hadn’t been conceived, her mother likely would have been gone before she could grow to love the Badlands in the way she’d explained to Encelia that she did. Klara had tried to tell Encelia it was because of her she was able to break through the trauma of the past and live a life she was actually happy with here in Salem.
But that didn't magically undo the way Klara had raised her.
Encelia had understood that her mother, with her nervous but hopeful expression, had wanted their talk to go nicely. Encelia didn’t want to start a fight (she hated confrontation), so she’d just smiled back and said, I understand, and fought how oddly numb she’d felt when her mother stepped close to embrace her. As a knobby-kneed filly she had begged and pleaded for physical comfort. Now, having her mother hold her just made her feel nervous.
Days passed, weeks, and Encelia was beginning to feel like she was drowning, even while standing in the middle of the desert. She never broke rules or left the herd, but one early morning, before the sun had even brushed gilded fingers across the horizon, Encelia slipped away from everyone. If she was hoping to feel less like she was drowning or maybe even catch the thrum of excitement in her veins the closer to the shoreline she approached, she would be sorely mistaken. Encelia felt as numb as always, but for some reason, she kept walking.
The ocean splashed and freckled her skin, and Encelia walked further. It swallowed up her long legs, brushed along her narrow sides and then lapped delicately along her back. Then, she couldn’t touch sand, and her legs kicked out and she bobbed and struggled for a moment (she’d never swam where she couldn’t touch ground) but ultimately caught her stride.
When she pulled herself ashore on the bank of Crossing Isle, Encelia did not know that’s where she was. Even as an island native and well into her early adulthood, she’d hardly remembered the lessons of directions that’d been passed down to her. Encelia, who had never looked beyond the Badlands borders, had never thought she would need to remember where the other islands and territories were. There were places she knew were strictly off limits (Tinuvel, the Bay) and others she should generally avoid lest she stir trouble (the Lagoon, the Commons during Fall). Unluckily, it was exactly one of those placed that Encelia had pulled herself up on, the Common grounds, just a few hundred feet away from the borderline it shared with the Lagoon.
It was only a few yards up from the lapping shallows that Encelia walked to and then stopped, just where the sand gave way to dirt and grass was able to grow. She lowered her muzzle to the ground and brushed her whiskered lips along the grass, then began to eat, filling her still-empty belly. Occasionally she lifted her long, narrow face (she had much of her mother’s graceful, heavily Arabian influenced build) and glanced off toward wherever she heard distant noises of other horses, but she never made any move toward them. She was happy just grazing at the edges of the Common grounds, still close to the ocean, as if instinctively she knew at the first sign of danger she could flee into the surf and make her way back to Salem before trouble might catch her.
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