As Kendry works methodically over her weeping legs, the pain ebbs, leaving her drained and empty of everything. The warmth of him loosens the tension in her joints, and she shifts her weight from limb to limb after he draws back, lifting each leg to stretch it as much as she can without re-breaking the skin. Hyori watches him, puzzling over his words in thoughtful silence. Where had he come from, really? What had led him to this point? Like her, he’d said, he wasn’t supposed to be here, and yet in the next breath mentioned the familiarity of their newly-shared space. Her curiosity piques, and she wants to ask him about it - but just as small talk feels too light, prying into his past feels too heavy. It’s only a short while before he’s speaking again, anyway, and she holds her tongue.

The stallion’s mention of sleep reminds her of her exhaustion, weighing on her like thick down blankets. She forces herself to bend her neck and pick at a few mouthfuls of dry, stubbly forage, but it’s soon clear that nothing - neither her hunger, nor her modesty, nor her lingering anxiety - is enough to keep her awake. The sound of Kendry’s steady breathing lulls her into unconsciousness, and she slips into the pull of its tide willingly, rocked by its gentle waves.

It fades, soon, to the growing sound of the current, pitching louder and louder until it roars in her ears and tosses her about like a ragdoll. The ocean swirls, fathomless blackened blue and speckled like stars with her family’s pale bodies. Their cries fill the air, rising over the water in one great cacophony. A massive swell rears up, towering over her. It’s too late; they’re gone, her family is gone and she can’t save them, no matter how much she tries. Their ghostly eyes glow from the shadows, boring with laser precision into the confines of her fractured soul.

Sister, they call from all directions, their many voices both sweet as honey and so shrill they hurt. Join us.

The sea comes crashing down atop her, muting her frenzied screams.

Hyori jolts awake with a start. Her breath comes in short pants, and she finds her face wet with tears. Hurriedly she wipes them off on one of her upper legs, remembering her frozen lashes from earlier. They’ve slept for long enough that night has fallen, cloaking the clearing in pitch darkness. Streaks of faint silvery-blue moonlight cut between the branches of the trees. Half-here, half-not, she waits groggily for her eyes to adjust, but when they do she jerks back, surprised at first to see the creamy stallion beside her. The fog clears as her energy returns, and she remembers. The swim, the beach, Kendry, the walk -

The swim. The willowy mare’s gaze darts over Kendry’s wide back, staring towards the path they’d taken earlier. Now that she’s not half-drowned and frozen, the feeling of separation from her loved ones is what spikes up her heart rate and rakes like sharp claws across her tender flesh. She should be with them, should be surrounded by them, huddled together for warmth; this, this quiet space with only one other horse - and a stranger, at that, someone she’s known for hours and not years… this is so unnatural, so wrong she can’t stand it.

She didn’t know where they were, but she had to find them. She couldn’t be the sole survivor. If she was, she wouldn’t feel the pull that she did, the draw that turned her away from the still-sleeping Kendry and in the opposite direction, away from the Southern beach and to the edges of the islands where her family might lurk, battered and bruised but alive and waiting for her to join them and become whole once more.

She gets halfway out of the clearing before something brings her to stop, looking at him over her shoulder. He seems more at ease like this, his body unburdened with the melancholy that plagued him during the waking hours. Her gut twists; Hyori champs her teeth at the uncomfortable sensation, her ears flicking to and fro. She could wake him, ask him to join her in her searching. Maybe they’d find his own flock along the journey. Maybe he’d want to join hers.

Uncertainty stirs sudden and brisk like cold air on her exposed skin. He could try to blend in with her family, but would they accept him, in turn? In all her years, they’d never taken in outsiders. What would she do if they drove him away?

The buckskin takes one step forward, then back, feeling torn. She can’t just leave him like this, not when he’s done so much for her… but the call of the familiar is too tempting. It crushes her under its thumb, stealing her breath and her happiness in one fell swoop.

“I’m sorry,” Hyori whispers into the space between them, her voice thick with guilt. Before she can reconsider, the slender mare is moving, ignoring the protests of her aching joints and sore muscles to push fully out of the clearing and into the open. She lifts her muzzle, nostrils flaring; after a moment of searching, the briny tang of saltwater comes faintly, carried on a frigid northeastern wind. Fear bolts down her spine, but she follows it. Her steps come gingerly at first, muffled by a soft blanket of fresh white snow; when she’s sure she’s out of earshot, she breaks first into a trot, then a canter, and finally a frenzied gallop. Winter, she knows, is not forgiving, and if her flock has suffered a fate similar to hers, she only has so much time to find them before the elements take them away forever.

She will search. She will walk the length of this land - this Lost Island, home to vagabonds and misfits - until she can’t anymore, or until she finds her missing brethren, whatever comes first. The sooner she answers their siren calls, the sooner she can ease the emptiness in her heart, forget about this place and this wretched day and cut loose the thread that links her, almost imperceptibly, back to a small copse of trees and a pair of warm blue eyes.