Had it been Styrke that watched the roan move onto the beach bringing with it a youth, a sinister sound would have escaped his lips that others would call a laugh. But silence crept over the land, a smothering quiet that even the slightest sounds seem booming. Xina was in the threshold of that silence, lost in the throes of chaos that she would explain to be her mind. So many voices, thoughts and feelings swirled within that she could not decipher one from another. Yet as she heard the sands shift as hooves pressed into the loose grains of earth it all became still.


Black trimmed ears tilt forward and eyes reveal themselves from behind lids that had been closed. One brown and the other blue search the scenery around her resting form upon the ground, the shade of a palm concealing her in the shadows. Raising her head, her long black mane fell further down her neck from where it had been hanging around her lowered crown. The sound of hoof steps is still solid, heavy from that of an adult horse echoed by that of a much younger one. It could not be her daughter and the pale man who owned this land, a simple call would have sufficed yet the mare could not feel the need to become worried only curious.


Slowly one black leg is pulled out from under her roan chest and then the other before she forces her way up with a huffed breath. With a few swishes of her thick tail the mare gives a shake of her body to rid the loose sand that clings to the short silky hairs of her belly. Raising her chin so that she can get a better view once more it is now that she can see the man with the child where shrub had been blocking her view. As of now she does not recognize either and her ears pin briefly at the intrusion but the mare knows it is not her place. She is neither lead nor owner of this land; it would be Şahin’s job or his second to visit with the trespasser. Yet as she watches them make their way closer to the jungle, Xina’s hard gaze catches sight of the youth’s wasting form.


Upon instinct the mare moves without even thinking, her body being thrown into the motion of a stiff trot. After resting in the sands for so long the dark limbs do not want to move as fluidly as they had in her younger days. But the aged mare is not old by any means and does not act it as she pulled up in front of the stallion.


As the mare goes to open her dark lips she instantly closes them, words dying upon her tongue. Recognition suddenly floods her otherwise unreadable two toned gaze and a hard line is formed upon her kissers. “Rade” she speaks the word as if it is a plague, her ears tilting back yet not laying upon her skull as of yet. He is nothing but a further reminder of the stallion who has disappeared and who is unlikely to never return.


Without waiting to see if he will speak Xina turns her gaze to the young stallion at Rade’s side, her eyes boring into his with almost a cold look. The boy looked pathetic, weak and malnourished. Where had Rade drug him up from other than a grave? But the color of those eyes upon that dished face, it gave her the knowledge she needed to know that made her temper flare all the hotter. “It seems Debonaire has another heir….if he lives.” With a harsh snort, the mare turns her gaze back to Rade with a cold look. “What do you want?”