Seconds trickled by. The roar of the falls spilled into what would otherwise be a stretch of silence between them. Avangeline watched him, this stranger, and wondered very briefly on his decision to approach him. It had been an unconscious one, as though she wasn’t aware with each step she’d drawn nearer, but now that she had she wondered if she drew to him as she had to Al-Hattaal all that time ago. It had been a night like this one, though she’d been far more frightened and desperate, but he’d soothed her woes all the same. She was a dependent creature, had been since the day she was born, so it was very likely that was the cause which had brought her to him.
He could be every bit of the brute that she was warned against, but something told her he wasn’t. Then again, Avangeline had once been attacked by a mare she’d thought needed help… so perhaps her judgement was askew.
Her ears, black-tipped, twitched when at last he spoke. His voice was so soft, like hers had been, and she concentrated in order to pick it out over the waterfall. “I could say the same.” She replied in turn, watching him. Her voice held no edge of sass, it was as calm as she was, inside out, perhaps saturated ever so slightly by the sorrows that clung to her like ghosts. “What is it that keeps you up tonight?” The thought that she could momentarily turn attention to someone else’s woes over her own was promising. A distraction. A rock thrust into the never-ending loop that had become her life: wake, eat, drink, wander. Wake, eat, drink, wander.
Was he new here? She wondered. Had he come to the islands a previous native, knowing full well where it was he stood? Was he a member of an island already, building strength on Crossing before returning to his home? Was he as lost as she was? She ached for a familiar bond, for a companion to understand her woes. There had been sadness in Al-Hattaal, though he’d never outright said it, as he searched feverishly for his sister. There had been a kindness in Bjorn; compassion much like her own. Maybe that was why, out of the years she had been lost here, she’d found some sort of bond with them.
The mist of the waterfall drifted, dappled onto her skin and chilled her. Autumn had barely brushed fingers against the world, meaning the nights still held some of the summer heat. The falls were a welcome place during Crossing Isle’s winter. Drops collected on her dark hair, holding like little crystals that caught the world in their microscopic reflective surface.
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