The heat in the Desert slowly increased, and after a certain point Cerosi stopped adjusting to it. She still loved the land, and thoroughly enjoyed the openness of the dry earth and her freedom to gallop around and kick up dust, but the heat became suffocating and running around became too much work. She would get used to it eventually, but it was her first Salem summer, and the dark mare thought she could cut herself some slack this time. When she grew bored of laying around in the shade all day and sweating regardless, she left Cain a note and slipped into the warm waves of the ocean.

For a while even the sea was uncomfortably warm, but as the sand dropped away beneath her, cold water began to roll up from the depths and she became grateful for the relentless sun crackling the air above her head. Maybe she was more used to the heat than she thought, but the tungsten mare carried on anyway. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew the vague direction of the Crossing isle and the other islands in the chain.

It had been mid-morning when she left, and she reached the Crossing not long after. Having already explored the big central island, she did not stay, but instead followed the Eastern beach until the land rose up next to her in a towering mountain. Here the air became colder, and it was at the edge of this mountain where she entered the waves once again, following the colder breeze. This time she definitely shivered as she swam away from the Crossing, but she kept going anyway. She wanted to remind herself how lucky she was to have the heat to come home to, so she would make herself freezing if she could just to appreciate the Desert sun later.

It was working, and by the time her hooves met the dark pebbles of the Tinuvel beach, she was shivering quite hard. She did not regret coming out, but she could not wait to go home.

Stepping out of the surf, Cerosi paused. The land was marked by the territory borders of a stallion, and she wasn’t sure how close she wanted to get to her old life of ownership and, essentially, slavery. She approached the frosted forests of Tinuvel cautiously, her water-darkened coat twitching at the breeze and from her nerves. Maybe it was best to stay near the water, she thought, and trotted along the beach instead of moving inland. She came to a slash in the land at one point and stopped there, studying the shape of the Inlet and the way the ocean cut deeply into the island like a thorn into flesh.

• CEROSI •