Like the stranger beside her, Ylva, too, is soon asleep. She struggles awake some time later, as the sparkling sky spins overhead and the freezing winds buffet her exposed side. It takes her a moment to remember where she is, but then she feels the body beside her stir. The stranger - another young mare around Ylva’s age - is looking up at the stars, and comments on their beauty. Thankfully, Ylva can understand her - she had been uncertain whether the islanders could speak her language - but the stranger’s accent is unusual to her ears, easy to understand but with a distinctly island flavor.
“They are,” she agrees, wondering how her own accent sounds to the stranger’s ears.
The cold accosts her on all sides when the stranger pulls away to stand. Ylva follows suits, her stiff legs complaining, and finally comes face-to-face with the stranger for the first time, a strange experience considering they have already wept and slept together. The young mare is a little taller than her, with bold white patches like nothing Ylva has ever seen, that practically glow in the moonlight. Ylva is tempted to stare, to turn the stranger around and look her all over like some exotic artefact, but she forces herself to make eye contact.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she says with a sheepish smile, and stifles the urge to shiver against the brisk wind. “T...thank you for keeping me warm. I probably would have frozen to death if you hadn’t found me.” She takes a moment to glance around at the expanse of the dark, barren landscape surrounding them, and flares her nostrils to test the air. She thinks she can smell other horses, but she is unable to tell if the scents are new or old.
“Are you alone out here too?”
2; norwegian fjord; red dun pangare; 14hh
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