She resented the heat that coaxed dirty rivulets of moisture down her slender back, and the sand that ground and shifted and fell apart beneath her hooves. She disliked the cacti that she ran into when she wasn't looking, and the way that scorpions rose from the dark places in the night to skitter over the endless sand.

She resented the lover that kept his distance almost as much for this new hell as she did for the fact that he would not let her go. She hated that it had taken so long for him to finally do as she'd bid and that she had killed the good in him to achieve her goals. But mostly… mostly Switch resented herself. The fire that had driven her for so many years and made each new daybreak it's own adventure had never rekindled after her escape attempt. It smoldered beneath the surface - smoky and restless - but ultimately without a purpose. Soaring from her cage only to be yanked back to the earth by the chains she'd thought she'd broken had broken something in her, and the small repair she'd managed to begin beneath the Lagoon's watchful eye had been further destroyed when her lover had lifted the end of her leash and tugged her to the Dunes.

Before, as a young filly, when Switch considered the traditional gender roles of her kind - that stallions reigned and mares followed - there had always been a buffer of amused detachment. Surely, she'd thought, there was no way that she would fall for someone so cruel as to enforce such archaic boundaries upon her… and yet, here she was.

Just as trapped.

Catalina never fully understood the arrangement of her world, but it hardly seemed to matter. She had her mother, of course, and her big brother, and that was enough. The two stallions she thought of equally as her fathers were rarely seen, and even on the rare occasions that Cat was able to see her papa's footsteps, her dam never allowed her to venture closer. She rarely bothered asking anymore.

The heat was oppressive as usual, but young Catalina was less affected by it than were her darker relatives. She crept away from their noonday naps on hooves that stepped lightly and carefully on the hardest packed pieces of sand, preventing the telltale rustle of falling sand that would wake her dam. It would perhaps be cooler to stay beneath the sliver of shade that they'd found, but Catalina wanted the ocean.

Ever since she had first seen it, she'd craved the feeling of the waves splashing against her body. The way the cold was was almost shocking in comparison to the heat of the day. Her chances to play in the ocean were, of course, much rarer. Switch rarely brought them close enough for Cat to play - which Cat never questioned. It never occurred to the weanling girl that her mother might have reasons for keeping them away from predictable paths, and so she never asked.

Once over the dune and out of sight, Catalina raced recklessly into the blessedly cool waters and dove as far in as she could. A wave swamped her, and she dove beneath it with a held breath, and waited for the next surge to come in. Gleefully, she launched upward and rode the wave back toward the shore with a mad grin on her pale lips. Snorting the salt from her nares, she scrambled to regain her footing just as movement ahead caught her eye.

The figure was hard to spot against the glaring brightness behind him, but Cat knew of only one horse who wore a coat of such gold and a twin thrill of fear and excitement raced through her. Catalina had seen her father only twice. Once, when she had been born - although that memory was fuzzy and confused- and then again when Fiero had brought them here. He was a mystery to her. Surely he had a whole library's worth of stories that she'd never heard. And games she'd never played.

Catalina was so entranced by the simple sight of him that she fully forgot where she was. A particularly strong wave lifted her hind end and tossed her forward in a haphazard tangle of limbs. By the time she'd managed to sort the sea from the sky and sat upright in the shallows, she was very nearly upon him.

"Papa," she squeaked, before scrambling awkwardly to her feet and rushing toward with her head held low in supplication. The plea raced from her mouth, the words tumbling over themselves in their haste to be spoken. "¡Por favor, no le digas a mamá que estaba jugando en el océano!Please don't tell mom that I was playing in the ocean!" Head ducked, Catalina turned the full force of her baby blue eyes upward at her father.

mare // paso fino // black // 14.3hh // lagoon // loveinspired