The water lapped at Tinuvel’s pebbled shore, frothy saltwater reaching up the shoreline only to be drug back over and over again. Nephilim stood quiet, just a yard above where the water reached, gold eyes blankly caught on the ground. He was sore and stiff, bruises and scrapes a glaring contrast to his light colored coat. His hair clung wet to his flesh, tail tangled about his back limbs and mane plastered against his shoulder. His mane hid some of the uglier marks, where teeth had made purchase and pinched wrinkles of his skin hard enough to bruise.

By a glance it was clear Nephilim had been involved in a fight and, given his subdued, quiet stance, it was acceptable to assume it was a fight he’d lost. However, that was only the surface. Nephilim’s mind was trapped like a fly caught in a spider’s web; he was prisoner to the black thoughts spinning threads through his head and refusing to let him go. Images continued to play in his head, all staring the cream mare who’d birthed him, from how she’d treated him so wrongly as an innocent child to how she’d abandoned him when he was barely of age to digest grass. He thought of the day she’d finally severed whatever tie instincts had bound them by, spilling the dirty truth at his hooves and letting him know just why she’d always loathed him.

For all the hatred in his heart, for all the wounds inflicted not on his body, but on his heart, he blamed her. But in spite of it all, he wasn’t willing to let her win. She’d wished she had killed him when he was newly born and so, to throw it back in her face, Nephilim would live. She would never be able to escape his presence in these islands. He would not just quietly waste away on Tinuvel, minding his business and making sure to never intersect with any who might carry his name back to Luthien. No… Nephilim would be somebody because she wished him to be nobody.

He snorted, and the sound seemed loud in the quiet that the beach had been. He lifted his head, lips grimacing as his muscles curled tight and sore beneath his coat. A rage was boiling in his gold eyes, still fresh from all that he had unexpectedly suffered upon his visit to Luthien. He didn’t know where Dances with Wolves was; the young colt had fled with him toward the Forest, but the smells of his birth home had been too much for Nephilim after the experience he’d gone through. Instead, assuming Dances would follow lead and turn, Nephilim had turned and made for the closest shoreline, plunging into the ocean and swimming for the closest land where he’d rested for a little while before continuing his journey to Tinuvel.

Walking forward he possessed a slight limp and recalled when the cream mare had hit his shoulder with her hooves, and then when pain had come again when she’d knocked him down, into the water, and he’d slammed that same shoulder into the rocks below. Nephilim made his way slowly up the shoreline, not yet calling out for any of the herd, not yet sure if he even cared to cross their path. They’d know he was in a fight, but they wouldn’t know why. Maybe they’d assume he’d attempted to bring back a mare or pushed another band stallion too far and lost… how little they knew about him, truly.


((ooc: this thread takes place directly after the events in the Prairie <3 ))