His hooves have carved a path from his persistent pacing, from the dunes and then to the oasis again, eyes on alert and watching as he always should have been. Fiero kept his remaining women close, scared to lose either of them. Surely now Nils and Fuego would figure him to be driven mad, losing so much in such little time that perhaps the heat of Salem had fallen to the dunalino at last. He’d lost some weight on his one man disappearance mission into the heart of their home, ashamed to show himself for losing to the draft mare storming his beach, for losing his heart when he’d managed to fix everything that was broken between them. All that remained was her fading scent he found in the reeds around the watering hole, where he had made his bed and thought of every other reason for this loss that wasn’t just his own fault.

A shadow passes over him, and while usually it wouldn't pull his attention away from the task at hand, he can’t help but to allow his gold eyes to wander and follow the vulture circling in the sky that had been joined another, each moving opposite of the other as they circled high above. Another unfortunate soul, he thinks, eyes dropping to what he assumed to be another poor creature lost to the heat but is instead greeted by the figure of another horse that looked far too familiar for Fiero to take a chance on.

“HEY!”, he yells at the pestering buzzards, the pair having landed to pick and prod at what they thought would be an easy meal but the horse on the ground was far from dead and with Fiero’s approaching form they weren’t having a chance at all. He slips down the sand with sure steps, trying to hurry to the side of the black body on the ground while also trying to keep from breaking his damn neck on the shifting dunes.

The body, upon closer inspection is not his beloved, but of another mare who succumbed to the heat of the day. “Excuse me,” Fiero is gentle when prodding at her, lowering his neck to give her a gentle push but also to double check that the rise and fall of her sides was not the dunes heat playing tricks on him as well. He becomes a little more persistent, nudging her more, and even going as far as tugging at a strip of her mane between his blunt teeth; anything at all to get her attention. To be laid out without cover here would surely kill you eventually and Fiero had enough on his plate without adding a mare dying on his watch.