It hurts. Everything hurts. The scrapes on her legs burn with the sting of saltwater, grains of sand embedding themselves into exposed pink flesh with every tiny movement; her eyes burn with hot tears, freezing into rough clumps of frost on her lashes; and, more painful than anything, her soul wrenches, ripped into pieces with every friend and loved one that slipped beneath the waves and was gone from her forever. It lies in tatters at the center of her being, the unfettered agony of her situation overwhelming her so that she doesn’t notice the stallion striding with such purpose towards her crumpled form.

She cries for so long and so loudly that her throat goes raw. Hyori is whimpering, silent sobs and powerful, cold-induced tremors shaking her chest, when warmth fogs around her narrow face. Almost instantly her blubbering stops, shocked into silence, and though she still trembles, the only thing that pulls now from her lips are ragged, rasping breaths. All she wants is the embrace of her flock, of the crush of warm, familiar bodies against her frozen skin, and in her delirious, touch-starved state she cannot help but to crane her head towards the velvet muzzle that ghosts across her poll. Her eyes, clamped tightly shut and almost stuck that way for the icicles binding them together, open warily, blinking away the tears that still come in an attempt to look upon the stranger’s face. The water distorts him, but from what she can see there is no malice or ill intent in his expression, merely concern, and she locks onto it with desperate fervor, even as the fear of the unknown comes crawling up her spine. In a perfect world, her flock would support itself; they’d take care of each other, mending their own wounds, feeding the weak, healing the sick without any outside intervention.

In this world, though, Hyori doesn’t have that luxury.

The weight of her loss presses again on her heart, and she can feel the grief rising in her throat, threatening to spill over - just in time for him to ask her a question, one that pulls her back into her bloody, aching body. If she was lost to her mind before, now she grows painfully aware of her physicality, her muscles sore and legs weak. She tries, feebly, to gather them beneath her, hissing in pain. “Who -” she tries, her speech cut off by dry, heaving coughs. “The rocks,” she manages with a sob. “Under the water -” And now she’s crying again, her mind’s eye filled with visions of pale bodies swept away in the current. What do the goddamned rocks matter? Who cares? Being dragged along the ocean floor means nothing. Her family is gone.

Hyori deflates, and is about to lay her head back down on the sand and succumb to the pain coming from all directions when the stallion presses his nose to her cheek. Reminded again of his presence, she clings to it with renewed intensity. Instinct takes over, and her ears press back against the tangled curtain of her sopping-wet mane as her front legs flail out in front of her and dig into the snow-flecked earth. The buckskin grits her teeth, forcing her hinds to follow suit, and she throws her weight back, then forward. Almost immediately her legs buckle and she falls back to the ground with a dull thud, gasping in surprise. Her eyes flick up, tethering to the icy blues nestled in the creamy planes of the stallion’s broad face. She doesn’t speak, but the message is clear: don’t leave me. He is all that she has in this world, the one soft thing in a sea of hard angles and sharp corners, and if he abandons her she will hack herself to shreds against them until she is nothing but foam on the storm-grey sea.

Hyori steels herself, leaning hard into the stranger’s broad form. She moves more slowly this time, testing her front hooves before gathering her hindquarters and pushing. The mare rocks up, legs trembling like a newborn’s, and she holds onto him like a barnacle, moaning with pain. Her head dips low, attempting to steady herself, but as she gets closer to her resting place the metallic tang of blood and the faint scents of her brethren flood her nostrils. She jerks sharply up, as if stung, and buries her face in the thick cords of his neck, quivering like a leaf in the wind. She knows they need to move, and the second she feels his muscles start to shift she will follow him wherever he goes, but everything about this moment is too much to handle. Hyori must be away from this specific spot on this foreign beach where reminders of her recent past overload her senses and paralyze her with despair. If she is ever to heal, to fly across the horizon and search (However foolishly) for survivors, she will have to find a spot where she can focus on one insurmountable obstacle at a time. Perhaps this nameless savior can show her the way.