She didn’t get it. The Arabian looked over the horizon again, stubbornly trying to find a sign she knew wasn’t there. Was this the afterlife the Council spoke of? With every dune she saw she remembered their words, words speaking of a bountiful paradise. It was to be green, and the jungle, they said, was so thick and full that only the slim forms of the Blessed were permitted entry. Why, then, had she ascended to a place with miles upon miles of open space? Was it punishment? From the moment she was born, she had devoted her life - her entire being - to service of Spirit and of her community. She had done all that was asked of her and more. It made no sense, but Spirit did nothing without purpose. Perhaps the barren landscape was a border of sorts, and all she needed to do was venture deeper and find the holy ground on her own. The mare latched onto that idea like a drowning man to a life preserver, and was just about to tumble down inland when she heard hoofbeats behind her.

She whipped her head around to look upon their source, wincing against the sudden throbbing of her temples. A horse, coming towards her so quickly it was as if the wind carried him. Silhouetted against the rising sun, his features were indistinguishable, but she could see the curve of his skull, carved as hers by Spirit in likeness of the slopes of the mountains surrounding her valley home. The panic she’d just begun to soothe rose like bile in her throat.

There were others, the Council had said. Others that looked like them, but lived in the desert bordering their verdant jungle. Others that had driven her family like criminals into the darkness and forced them to stay there, life or death, because they had been sinners and were envious of her ancestor’s closeness to God. Others that would, given the chance, violently remind you of your place if you took a single step out of it. She wondered now if this stallion was one of those others, and when he came near she took a few skittish steps back.

He asked her a question - and she knew she had learned the language he spoke, but could not decipher most of it beyond a polite address. She had been promised absolute knowledge of all dialects upon her ascension. It frustrated her, not knowing. She had not practiced much in the last year. She had been waiting for Spirit to take her, as the Council had predicted.

She did not know then that the Council would later take matters into their own hands.

She watched him move to come closer and raised a front leg, muscles tensed to turn and run. Was this some sort of trap?

Had she not made it to heaven at all, but to enemy territory instead?

He made no further movements, switching to the common tongue. This was one she was fluent in - it was the language of Nekane, of Ratan, of the others who had sinned and been damned to a lifetime of servitude for it. She knew once the words fell from his lips that he was not from home. Her posture relaxed some, and she could have laughed at the absurdity and sheer ignorance of his question. The Council would not follow her here. They could not. Not yet, at least.

The mare shook her head again in response, a small, distracted sort of jerk, and now that she knew he was not of any immediate danger to her she slid her gaze away and began to scan the horizon once more. Where was Spirit? Would this stranger know? “Please,” she said suddenly, turning to look him in the eyes. Her voice was hoarse and the words of the common tongue burned in her throat like the salt in her wounds. “Tell me - where is there water?”

Where there was water, there was life. And where there was life, there was Spirit. The closer she got to Spirit, the sooner the rapidly-increasing discomfort in her soul would ease.

She had been promised prosperity. She had been promised peace. She had paid the ultimate price for these and many other beautiful things, and she would search these islands forever until she found them.