A whinnying cry cuts across the still dark night and Shararat turns her head, swanlike, to observe the horse whose hooves thunder over the dry, packed ground and join the rhythm of her run. He’s young, not yet grown into the full strength of a stallion, but his coat ripples with health over firm muscle. She allows him to keep pace with her for several beats longer, noting the contrast of color coursing through his mane and across his shoulders and hips to slip like white water down to his hooves. His eyes are lit with warmth, not from the absent moon, and it is his expression more than his question which coaxes her to glide to a graceful halt and stand, delicate ears directed at him.
"I’m visiting," Shararat replies, and though it is dark she can see the faint track of stripes across his body now that they aren’t at a run. "From the Badlands, just yonder. I’m Shararat," she says, and now her voice warms as the reality of her solitude fades away in the face of real company. "It’s no trouble, is it? To be visiting. I only wanted to see what else Salem has to offer and this is the one territory I’ve not been in yet. It’s beautiful," she lowers her voice as she looks around them, admiring the endless stretching land and the vast, inky sky notched with a million miniature faint suns.
Shararat flicks her tail and relaxes it as her dark eyes return to Akello. "The sky has never looked so big. Do you think someone watches us from up there, the way we watch the stars?" Is it Bahadir’s Bast who gazes down kindly, or the cold eye of Iftikhar’s Uzay? Perhaps it is a deity unknown— Shararat can only guess, and feel humbled by the prospect of anything so big deigning to grant her any attention at all. |