“Ooh, no, never!” Rhadra promises with a little laugh, inordinately pleased to be included so warmly in a near-stranger’s secret. Where’ve you come from, she wants to ask, but finds herself suddenly shy, especially when the mare adorned with seaweed offers to exit the water for her sake. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she says, backing away from the surf until her hind cannon knocks the smooth driftwood log to give the other room.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nereid,” she says, her expression warming again. “I am Rhadra. My own swim here was arduous, though not at all recent. I’m still a little reluctant to wade back in,” she explains. Her eyes are drawn back to the waves rippling up the sandy beach. “To be honest I’ve never even seen an ocean before I crossed this one. I thought it was just from stories. The widest body of water I ever saw before that was a river, and I never even tried to cross that one.”
Rhadra has yet to see a storm oceanside, and her own swim could hardly be considered hectic, and yet— and yet, she rode the high swells and had been swept down into blue valleys on her way here, and while on a day like today the water seems calm she’s felt the tug of it on her legs, fought the wet grapple of the current as she strove for shore. A shudder runs over her and her ears tip back in remembered alarm as she looks back at Nereid with eyes gone wide. “Aren’t you the least bit afraid of it?” |