Falls

Nadja had not felt anger in a long time. For months, the blue mare had felt only emptiness, interrupted occasionally by suffocating grief. The fury was almost a relief from her mourning, but she was not in a state of mind to appreciate it. Most of her feelings were directed inward. She blamed herself for what happened in the Dunes, and although she had not endured any direct physical abuse from the encounter, it had caused her immense stress and she had suffered for days afterwards from dehydration and heat sickness.

She needed a break.

She had recovered for the most part from the severe dehydration, but she had not felt anything less than sweltering since arriving on Salem, and there was no escape. The Dunes offered no nutritious soil in which trees could grow beyond stunted shrubs, and even the water in the oasis was not cold enough to soothe Nadja’s burning insides. So she made her way through the slippery sand to the beach, and made the swim to the Crossing.

Like the heat, Nadja had felt insatiably thirsty since being whisked away to the Badlands. She made a beeline for the Falls, her throat itching for the frigid, fresh water that cascaded down from somewhere in the Peak that loomed above. She trotted into the cozy clearing after following the sighing of the waterfall, but halted as the misty pool came into view. There was someone in the water, and though Nadja could not at first tell the gender of the other, she could tell they were beautiful. They almost blended into the Falls, their silver-and-black coat shining wetly in the mist. Nadja kept her distance, but gave out a gentle call. She didn’t want to interrupt their bath (not to mention she was easily intimidated by attractive individuals, regardless of gender) but she was so thirsty.

Shyly, the blue mare stepped forward. Her own winter coat had blown out immediately upon her arrival to Salem, although after her swim it was still messy with drying saltwater. She paid it no mind; she was only grateful for the breeze that cooled the skin beneath, unhindered by the thick fluff of the winter coat. She was only a few feet away from the water’s edge when she stopped again, studying the horse in the pool, wary of him; she was close enough to tell he was a stallion. Her encounter with Bahadir was not the first time she had been betrayed by a man, but it was the freshest. Her trust in strangers, and in stallions especially, had been injured. She kept her distance, waiting to see if she needed to run before she decided to drink.

NADJA