He had lost the black mare again on his journey across the ocean (again). This time his recovery was shorter. He spent the rest of the day after washing up browsing the island, exploring, staying in the shade and away from the mild heat of the day. At night, he was tired enough to actually fold his legs beneath him and sleep fully in the shelter of some tangled shrubs, close enough to the small lake in the middle of the forest that he could hear the rippling little waves as he fell asleep.

For two more nights he slept in that same spot, listening to the lake ripple gently and waking up before the sun. He spent the days exploring and grazing and relaxing (though he kept a constant eye out for predators, he had not yet found any sign of a single one). His mind rested as well, and he was afraid of either remembering his old life or forgetting about the black mare, but neither happened and Septimus slowly regained his sanity. He did not forget about Adelheid, but he stopped caring so violently about finding her. He wondered occasionally if she, too, had ended up on this island, but the idea was not stressful to him. He explored the forested half of this island, keeping to the cool shade, in relative peace.

At some point he accepted his isolation from others. Not long after he let Adelheid go, he let everyone else go, as well. There hadn’t really been much of an ‘everyone else’ to begin with -- the concept was stunted and fragmented, much less of a thing than the ‘everyone else’ of someone who has met many people who, in turn, have met many people themselves. Septimus knew there were others besides himself and the black mare, but he had decided his desire to meet them was comparable to that of a frightened and unfriendly cat. Whether Septimus was the cat or the everyone else was, he had not decided, but it didn’t matter. At least, until he heard the call of another horse from the beach. Could it be the black mare? Of course she was his first guess, and if it were indeed her, Septimus was decidedly the frightened cat, and Adelheid a lioness.

But he was not going to cower. Irritated and conflicted, the silver stallion made his way to the stretch of beach from which the call had come and observed the torn up sand. He followed the footprints; whomever it was, they had raced quite a distance. For sport? There were no tracks of a predator, or another horse, so obviously pursuit was out of the question. Picking up a light canter, Septimus followed the messy trail to a black smudge heaving on the beach.

He had been right.