Before the sun lifts from the horizon I plunge into the sea and strike away from Paradise. The last bit of the storm has long ago disappeared and there are a few stars left over, all being slowly swallowed by the strengthening light. I grin and keep kicking as I have so recently learned. My legs are strong, my body hardened from all the drills the red mare put me through on land, and it is no great struggle to maintain my rhythm and swim further and further away from shore. I feel adrenaline shock my system the first time a swell pushes me about on the surface but it is a feeling that leaves me giddy rather than terrified. FatherSound supports me as I swim, and if it his will that I float to one side or the other on my journey then so be it. So long as I get to where I’m going, I don’t care. He’s much louder when he’s all around me and I entertain myself by commenting on the differences in his color depending on how the waves shift and how lucky he is to have so many visitors as groups of gulls fly intermittently overhead. I know there are fish below me, too, but I don’t have time to inspect all that. My eyes lie on the dark mass of land ahead with mountains in the distance.
This is the second land I’ll have seen in my entire life. I have to swim around a good portion of it to reach anything that looks like a beach, and by the time I reach the shore I am panting. My legs burn from exertion. Swimming, while similar to running, is also very different and my body is still unused to it. I’m only half amazed at myself that I made it so far away from home on my first real jaunt into the ocean. Shaking out my coat, I flick my still-soaked tail and survey the area as the mid-morning sun warms my back. There’s a breeze coming off the ocean and it’s chilly, not at all like the balmy winds from Paradise, but I’m too enamored with my surroundings to pay it any mind.
This beach is wide, almost like a big mouth grasping at FatherSound. The sand under my hooves is much coarser than the soft, golden shores of my home and it’s black, like night sunk into the ground here and never seeped back out. It even looks like it has stars: there are flecks of white sparkling underfoot and when I lean closer I see they are shells, crushed by the tides or perhaps under the hooves of others. I don’t know yet if there are more horses here. I am eager to find out.
I stride up and off the beach to walk through thin grass tall enough to tickle my elbows and giggle at the soft brush of it against my underbelly. Up ahead are trees of a kind I’ve never seen before. Many have green, bristly branches all the way from the ground to their pointed tips, while some have white and black trunks and are only a little thicker than my own legs. Those ones have small, round leaves which make a pleasant sound when the breeze hustles past. The birds here, too, are different. I hear high, intermittent notes but can’t pick out anything in the trees. I stop moving to consider a stand of trees before me and try to spot the source of the sounds. |