Ŝoka almost let the water win.
The days tick by one after the other with attempt after aborted attempt on the shores of the Ridge by the surly blue roan. Every time she sloshes into the water panic seizes her and she wades back out. The need to swim again consumes her. The silver-tongued stallion does not seek to keep her with the herd, and though the kindness shown by the red mare is a tempting lure away from the rough sands, Ŝoka refuses to leave the shoreline. It happens one day that she looks up from her daily scowl at the ocean and realizes she has wandered away from any stretch of familiar beach. A quick jaunt off the sands shows her a land empty of horselife, with no strong scents carried on the wind. Ŝoka has made very little effort to get to know the herd here and it seems her absence has not been noted enough to warrant wrangling her back to the group from which she defiantly keeps herself apart.
A useful tactic, and much more passive than grumbling so often among the group that one or several tire of her sour attitude and drive her from their ranks just for some peace. Ŝoka wont risk lingering in case anyone is looking for her (however doubtful that is). She turns away from the Ridge and into a rocky run straight into the waiting water that, for the first time in over a season, seems to welcome her like a friend and not an enemy set on devouring.
That poetic notion is dashed almost immediately as she struggles through the waves, spluttering at each swamping wave, legs churning and her head held too high, ears hidden in her wet and wild mane as her eyes roll. She is afraid. Her fear makes her angry. The blue roan swears as she swims, buoyed by belligerence, until finally her small hooves touch the slope of a new shore. She has arrived at the mouth of a river and, just to make a point, remains deliberately in the water as she half swims, half walks out of the saltwater and up the sandy tributary onto the island.
The relief at being away from the dangerous waves makes her nose tingle unpleasantly, and though she fights it her eyes betray her and fill with hot tears. Helvíti ŝér, Rán, she spits over her shoulder at the ocean, her voice thick from sorrow. Ŝoka kicks savagely at the river as she hoists herself up to walk along the bank of the slowly moving water, her cheeks becoming increasingly damp from her reluctant crying, ears still pinned to her poll as she fights her grief with anger. With Fjö∂ur swallowed by the ocean, there seems little else to do but remove every last trace of that damned water from her coat. Ŝoka parks herself riverside and lowers her mouth to her right foreleg, sniffling, to rake the salt from her fur with aggressive teeth. |