[continued from their prairie thread]

The trip took longer than he’d anticipated; the girl tired far too quickly. They hadn’t even made it halfway from Luthien to the shoreline of Crossing Isle when he noticed her body dipping beneath the water at a more languid rate, and the way she seemed to struggle to thrust her legs hard enough to keep herself afloat. The last thing he wanted was for her to dip below the water’s surface where he couldn’t catch her and had to leave her behind to drown. Peyote had been tailing her mostly since he’d driven her into the sea, but noticing her pace slow he’d exerted a bit more energy, chased up alongside her, even if she tried any last ditch attempts with whatever energy she had left to get ahead of him.

Eventually she would have to accept his support or drown, so he swam alongside her, and when she needed it, allowed her to slouch against him. Despite the burning ache in his legs, he carried her through the water almost with a renewed pace, stronger somehow to be the one carrying her now.

By the time they made it to the shore he knew she needed rest, but he couldn’t afford to give it to her yet. He’d swam to the southernmost point of the Peak territory, but they were still at the corner of it, and he wouldn’t risk this operation being found out by the sisters. Peyote jabbed at her flank, trying to prod her forcefully into the soft bit of her belly (he knew it’d hurt, especially with how she might be still catching her breath from the swim) as many times as he needed to (and could) to get her moving. The entire way he stayed just as mean and demanding as he’d been when he’d pushed her into the surf, never once gentling. Whether she cried or accepted it, he was as forceful as he needed to be to keep her moving where he wanted her to go.

She had to travel even further than just the borderline of the Lagoon. Peyote occupied a very specific part of the marshland, where the mangrove trees grew thick and the dry patches of earth were few and far inbetween for quite a fair bit of distance before the ground rose up. He’d carved himself a private little home deep within that muddy jungle, as most of the horses wouldn’t like to trudge through so much mineral-rich muck just to get to the little island of wispy seagrass and open sky.

But that was what Peyote liked about it. Even among a territory shared by so many others, that place felt as if it was his. That was where he planned to hide her until he figured out how to somehow bring a brother back. If any of his brethren tried making their way through the muck to his little hideaway island or if she tried to make her way through the swamps to escape him, Peyote would find some way to stop it. He’d chase his brothers out, regardless how it might damage their favorable opinion of him. He’d be mean to her, as mean as he had to be, to keep scaring her until eventually she’d be too afraid to ever step foot off his island.

Just as he was now, forcing her surely aching legs to trudge through the thick mud, growing more insistant with how annoyed he was at how tired he felt, too. He’d shown little patience all day, but even now if she was more obedient to him, he became pushy once more, eager to get them through the thick mangroves ahead. He wound her around them, going from mud to water to mud again and, at last, in a wide circle where the mangroves broke, they came upon his grass-covered island.

As soon as he had her on the shoreline, up the incline of grassy sands, Peyote stopped. He finally offered her the space he hadn’t been giving her this entire time, and lowered his white-face somewhat as he looked at her. His blue eyes seemed suddenly soft; his dark-lined ears perked curiously forward as he quietly studied her.