Home. That’s where she had told him to go – the white-haired vision from his travels.

Dante had been away from the Lost Islands for a very long time. He had been driven away from his birth home by vivid nightmares and out into the strange, unknown lands he had wandered these past few years. He had searched for the answers to his wild and delirious questions, and she was the only thing he had found.

He had trusted blindly in her words, returning to the Islands with a directness akin to a determined homing pigeon. Anyone with such an ethereal appearance and commanding aura about them could not be wholly natural. She was his guided messenger, he was sure of it.

And so he was here.

Dante had landed on the Crossing, but from there he had headed straight for Atlantis as soon as his bearings returned to him. Salem, his birthplace, and Luthien, the home of his ancestors before him, held no interest for him. He had taken his home on Atlantis, and the beautiful island would always hold a special place in his heart.

The sun was still rising as Dante wandered into the reach, the directions to the Paradise a little fuzzy in his mind after his long absence. It had started to rain lightly, the falling droplets darkening his rich red pelt, marked all over with small scars and imperfections. His ribs were just visible under his skin, his hips protruding slightly, but his slender legs were sturdy and sure as he traversed the rocky, uphill ground.

He made his way to the top of a small hill so that he could look around with his one good eye and decide just where he was. It was only then, with the wind pummelling his hide and dragging him out of his own thoughts, that he noticed the scent of another stallion. It wasn’t very strong, but it was there.

Either someone had just left, or someone had just arrived in this empty land.

DANTE
a man possessed of some radical notions