I read the words on torn down walls,
reminding me how much I loved you

In the hollow bay she’d swam in, on the hard, cold sand shore she stumbled up, the wind roared with a frightful power. Its icy winds stung at her coat, pulled at her wet hair, and made her squint her eyes against it as her lips pulled in a grimace. Dickere’s gaze was on the ground in front of her as she stepped, her legs trembling each time her hooves made flat purchase against the ground. Shivering, exerting more energy than she possessed after the swim, she felt panic swell up steadily inside her. Lost. Lost and alone. She’d been so dumb, so dumb to leave…

But then a saving grace came in the form of a shout. Barely able to make out the words but enough to hear a voice, Dickere’s ears lifted from where they’d turned back and her eyes jerked upward in their sockets. She found herself looking at an older mare dressed in a myriad of blues, dark greys, blacks and white; an older mare who pressed her lips against Dickere’s salt-water dressed shoulder and breathed a cloud of warmth against her skin. She was a stranger, but Dickere had never been happier to see anyone in her life. Gone was the apprehension of coming across someone new and not knowing their behavior. The young filly stumbled toward the mare as she turned, following her as she led her from the beach. If Dickere had the ability she might have wept with thankfulness, but alas the bite of the wind was too strong to focus on anything else.

How far they went didn’t matter. Dickere only focused on following this mare one step at a time, her mind blubbering the gratitude she couldn’t say, thanking whatever divine power had delivered this stranger onto her. For though Dickere’s coat was somewhat grown out for winter preparations on Luthien, it was nothing like it should be for a territory like this. Most of her DNA (the slender, sleek form of Arabian) wouldn’t have prepared her for the cold at all. Even some nights at Luthien were almost too much.

The mare head of her pushed into some pine trees and Dickere followed eagerly, almost like a foal that didn’t want to be separated from its mother. The pine and branches scratched at her salt-slick skin and brushed some of the irritable white flecks away. It snagged her mane, caught her tail, but still Dickere walked forward. The tress all grouped together blocked out the heavy chill of the icy wind, but it still whistled further on outside. Dickere breathed heavy but slowly, as she stood in the clearing and realized she wasn’t alone, her stammering heart calmed in its heavy beat.

“Yes, I mean no…” She frowned, “yes, I think so. I think I’m okay. I don’t think I’m injured.” Dickere herself turned her slender neck to look at her limbs, holding them each up from the cold ground and settling them back down when no glaring wounds looked back at her. “I am,” she said, her voice small and tight with fear, sweeping her eyes back to her nameless companion. “I’m from Luthien; I was trying to follow my sisters to Crossing Isle.” She shivered. “Where… where am I?” A small moment of pause and then she really looked at her companion and realized now she could say what she’d wanted to just moments before. “Thank you,” her voice was soft with the gratitude she felt. “I’m Dickere.”