Just as fear and doubt started to trickle in, catching her in a confusing place between excitement and dread, a stranger shouted out nearby and pulled her mind from where it’d been wandering. Poppy watched the large, thickly built stallion approach quickly but held her ground rather than fleeing. It seemed he’d mistaken her for someone else, which must’ve been the word he’d yelled. Eva!
He pulled himself up quickly, and Poppy could see in his eyes that he did not recognize her. She didn’t recognize him, either. There were thickly built horses with packed hair around their hooves on Atlantis, but he was not one of them. His coat was still somewhat damp with seawater, as hers was.
He explained that he’d mistaken her for his sister and that she often got lost, but it was what he said to end the statement that made Poppy blink a few times in brief surprise. This place would have been one of the worst places to get lost in. That dreaded feeling crawled back into her belly again and her eyes (so light in their brown they almost looked gold) jumped away from him to look instead out over the clearing again as if she’d see some grotesque, macabre monsters milling about. It only looked like an ordinary gathering place, well grazed down and striped with paths worn by all the hooves that’d walked it over the years.
Do you know where you are?
One of Poppy’s ears flicked toward him and then, slowly, her gaze and the other ear followed. She frowned with concentration just briefly, warring over whether or not she trusted him enough to share the truth with him. “No.” Apparently, she trusted him.
Or maybe she was curious at how this place that looked so ordinary but set a chill in her bones was a dangerous place to be.
“It looks so normal,” she said as she glanced back out over the grounds, then admitted in that same soft, almost dream-like voice she often carried conversations with, “I was scared as soon as I got here. I didn’t know why.”
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