Valefar was no stranger to unbridled sky and unrestrained sunlight, nor was he unfamiliar with the chronic ache of thirst. To be parched and baking under the daylight while bobbing in water so deep his hooves didn’t even touch the earth below, however, was another matter entirely.
Val had never seen so much water in his life when he reached the ocean the day before. His home behind him was arid, stony wasteland, a jagged and inhospitable valley guarded by endless barren and impassable mountains. Water was hard to come by, and it had not rained for as long as Val could remember. One could lick the bitter moisture that dribbled down from the stony mountain bases, or brave the spines on unfriendly, water-hoarding plants. It was survivable, and he had known nothing else.
Now, as he kicked through the tepid seawater with fatigued legs and an aching back, Valefar had to resist the urge to drink from the gray-green waves. Instinct told him to gulp down as much as he could hold, but whenever a drop touched his tongue, it screamed with salt and death. Something about this water was poisonous, he thought, so he kept his lips tightly sealed as he swam.
The soot-shrouded stallion had no specific destination in mind. There wasn’t anything driving him away from his homeland, either. He had power in the black valley, followers and soldiers beneath his command, loyal and pliable people. Yes, the mountains were hostile and life in the valley had been tolerable at best, but it wasn’t like an endless puddle of poisoned water was an attractive alternative. It was almost worse; it teased him.
Valefar resented the placid, stinking waves with every hour he spent kicking away at them, while his thirst grew from a familiar pestering ache into a roaring beast. The sun had been low at the start of his journey, but now it beat down on him from above, only a few hours past its apex. Despite the oppressive heat and bitter, undrinkable water, Val still relished the sense of novelty. He had been bored in the black valley. He was not sovereign; he was still under someone’s thumb. His victories were never truly his while he operated on the leash of his handler. He wanted freedom even more than he wanted a goddamn drink of water.
As the sun begins to set and Val begins to doubt there is an end to this hellish sea, a shadow on the horizon solidifies and expands. Distant land slowly takes over Valefar’s field of vision, and he is shocked as he draws close enough to see that most of the land mass is actually dense forest. There is not a bare stone in sight, except for the face of the lonely mountain that materializes as he draws near.
His hooves, short and neat from a lifetime of harsh footing, touch soft sand at long last. Valefar hauls himself into the shallows, his body suddenly faltering, as though changing from a constant and thoughtless repetition of motion is more work than the motion itself, and the transition to a less strenuous activity is the last straw. He hobbles onto the dry beach, too numb with exhaustion to realize that the temperature has dropped substantially since the stretch of his swim under the merciless sun. It’s cold, enough that his near-black coat leaps and shivers with every breeze that sweeps by.
The sooty stallion does not stay long on the beach. In addition to his exhausting swim, Val had already been too lean for his own tastes, his skeleton seeming too big for the limited amount of healthy flesh that the black valley would nourish. His ribs are easily visible, and he has no winter coat or layer of fat to speak of. He is little more than wiry muscle and sharp corners of bone. He hastens into the shelter of the bare trees, too cold and thirsty to satisfy his curiosity about this alien landscape.
Valefar adjusts slowly to the temperature as he dries, but the sinking sun does not help his comfort, nor does the snow that he eats as he walks. He doesn’t think to look for a liquid water source; snow is as good a source as any, even better than a lick of condensation or a bite of a bitter (and sometimes hallucinogenic) succulent. He walks not because he searches, but because it is the only way he can keep his ragged, skinny body warm as the last whisper of heat from the sun he had so hated on his way here disappears in the wind.