Bishop had only just come back to the Islands. He had been born here, but for the life of him he could not remember where. He thought, perhaps if he’d returned to his homeland the memories would come flooding back. But as he pumped his thick and powerful legs in the icy waters, no images came to mind. There was a void, a block where his history resided within his mind. Sometimes he wondered, like now as he climbed the rocky shore of The Crossing, if it was for his own good that he could not remember his fathers’ face. He shook the water from his pelt as his feathered hooves carried him to drier land. Dry was a relative term. He dropped his nose down into the powdery snow, freshly fallen and not likely to stay very long, by the feeling of the slush beneath his hooves.

There were not a lot of things he knew for certain, but a few he knew down in his heart. He was not a family man. He had followed his mother off these islands and they had wandered for quite some time, just the two of them. A few times they had stayed on the outskirts of a herd, He had seen for himself what the protection of a mass of equine bodies could do when faced with danger, but even so it was not worth following all those rules. Bishop had learned to enjoy the freedom that came with being a roaming stallion.

He shook his great head, spraying water droplets off his matted and tangled mane, before he returned his nose down in the snow, continuing the ditch he’d drawn from the water and melted slush the powder was already becoming. He exhaled, disappointed at the squish beneath his hooves. No matter, surely with a name like Lagoon, the snow would not reach, or did the great Stallion who had done the naming before run out of things to describe. That was a story for religious folks, one out of many he had collected in his travelling. With these thoughts in mind, the thick black body of the brute crossed boundaries between common land and The Lagoon. As if he’d tripped up an alarm, the cry of a stranger perked her ears, making his feet stop for the first time since he’d climbed the shore miles back.

He lifted his nose up towards the sun, missing its warmth already, a nicker of his own echoing out in reply, though certainly it would sound strange to Argento’s ears. His adult voice had not yet been heard on these islands. He would be found easily enough, hovering just where he’d heard the call, occasionally adding a friendly sound now and again to keep his location clear.

5 | Equinox x Het Vuur | Fuchs