Cold sand touched Mercedes’ knees. She lowered her shoulder into its grainy, chilly softness, and the feeling soon covered most of her left side as she laid her body onto white beach. She rolled two full times, then folded her legs beneath her but did not rise. She had been wandering this island for about a week, and so far had run into nothing but the borders of two territories. As far as she was concerned, the rest of the island belonged to her.

The afternoon sun was unusually warm without the breeze to snatch the heat away before it reached the mare’s lilac-tan coat. In her place on the beach she dozed, soaking up the heat while it was there and enjoying the contrast the air had to the cold ground she was lying on. She didn’t fall completely asleep, however; yesterday she had caught the faintest scent of a man in her territory, and though she had dismissed in when it disappeared in enough time not to have made much of an impression, she remained wary, and kept her senses alert.

Despite her wariness, however, the mare eventually closed her eyes and forgot to open them. She pressed her nose into her knee, promising herself a quick nap. However, when she woke up, her shadow had switched sides and her senses were exploding with the extreme nearness of another creature.

Mercedes scrambled to her feet, ignoring the creaky stiffness of her joints from lying down for too long. She spotted him at once; a dark reddish stallion, splashed with white, marching about some ways down the beach as if he owned this chunk of land.

She started towards him, wasting a few strides at a walk so that her body could stretch. When her limbs felt considerably looser after only a handful of steps, she ripped into a charge.

She neared, and did not slow down until she was several feet away from him. Mercy put her hindquarters down, digging her hooves into the pebbly sand and throwing it up in front of her. She looked at him from below, as her neck stretched out and down and her muzzle reached for him, nostrils flared wide. It might have looked like a submissive greeting had her ears not been flattened and every muscle tensed. She watched him, curiosity battling aggression; she had never encountered another horse before, besides her mother, and she had been dead since before Mercy was a yearling.
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