The taste of freedom was something that she relished.

It was bitter and sweet on her tongue, and it felt like running over the dunes as the sand kicked up in great clouds of dust behind her. Her home, a land of turmoil and wartown by desperation and hunger. Great gaping jaws that spread open over the land, and the creatures that yawned into existence were driven by a desire to survive. Angry and volatile, her people were war-screamers, turning their voices up to the skies and shrieking their rage at the sky and the gods, begging for the rain to come.

The quiet and stillness of the lagoon had painted it in a rather desirable light.

As the winter faded away into oblivion, taking with it the scruffy coats and the squelching mix of mud and snow underfoot, and it became something akin to a tropical paradise. Not as hot as the sands she was accustomed to, but the cold had been chased away, along with the stallions that called this place home.

They were held captive by their own ignorance, and forced to co-exist with their enemies in the peak.

The thought brings a little half-smile to her lips, and she relishes the solitude. The palomino stallion had shirked from her challenge, citing that she had become a desirable woman in the eyes of a strange man. Yet another man that she would rain her wrath down upon, now that she is healed. The new scars have knit themselves together, and in the place of cuts and bruises, is puckered skin that peeks through a renewed coat of brown and flecked white. Her legs, once crippled by the bruising on her hips and her shoulders, are strong and she is once again quick and agile, as her kind are known for.

She was a force to be reckoned with.

Wandering the lagoon had grown boring, without young men to fall at her knees and beg for her attention, through posturing and begging with words that sounded like they belonged in a russian novel. So Yazheen lounges, her shoulder leaning into a great stooping tree, a patch of sunlight washing across her skin and warming her. Out of the corner of her eye, a woman enters the scene, followed closely by a fresh colt. Where the arabian is thin and delicate, this stranger is thick and stalwart, boasting strength where Yazheen is swift. Lazily, the mare turns her head to face the two of them, peering through the trees at them, observing the careful distance between them and the way the mare and her son seem to be waiting for something. “Well, you don’t look like you belong here.” Her voice reaches out into the clearing, but the desert woman remains in her upright lounging position.