The only taste in her mouth was abandonment. Even though her mother had assured her that the strange blue man was her father and that he would provide the best of care for her, Liat had not cared to see her mother disappearing in the ocean waves. Their farewells had been bittersweet, the young girl fighting tears of anger and fear, swallowing her pride and trying desperately to pull a brave face as she watched the tail end of her pale mother fade into the oncoming tide.

Not once did Volpe look back, but the dunskin reassured herself that this was because she too was feeling the pain of separation, and the two of them were trying to hard to be strong for one another.

Once her mother was gone for good, the girl had turned back to the inlet, finding her father too dissipated into the trees, leaving the newly weaned yearling all on her lonesome. She had been told that there were safety in numbers, and here there were the numbers she needed to stay safe... it was simply a matter of finding the others. Wearing a cool, stoic face, the filly moved towards the edge of the forest in the inlet, letting the cold air wash over her golden skin as she went. No matter how far she went from the ocean, she could still smell the salt in the air and the stink of the rotting driftwood and seaweed that had found purchase on the beach of her new home.

Determined to wash away this smell that did nothing more than remind her of the odd and uncomfortable predicament that she had found herself in after awaking from a nap, Liat wove her way through the trees and searched for someone, anyone, to occupy her mind for the time being. Surely, she thought, there were all sorts of nooks and crannies that were begging to be explored, and certainly she would be able to enjoy this land once she had grown accustomed to it. After all, there was a sort of eerie allure to the towering evergreens that loomed overhead, and the great, grey shore would make for a lovely frolicking spot once the spring and summer had returned to this island. Little did she know that she had been dropped off in the coldest part of the islands that were all clustered together, but for now the girl favoured the delusion of a warm summer after all this cold and heartbreak.

Finding her way back to the shore would be easy, she concluded, after wandering for some hours through the thick-set trees of the inlet. All she had to do was lift her nose up a little higher and she would smell the bitter salt in the air and she would be able to follow it back to the last place she had seen her mother. With that comforting thought in mind, she continued onward, no bothering to glance behind her, for fear that she would try and go back to the coast to find her milk-skinned mother.