Khajiit stands on the shores of the Dunes. Waves of shimmering gold expand endlessly before him, barren to the naked eye, only the warm palms of the desert air currents able to push the sand into different shapes. To his back roll waves of fathomless, white-rimmed cobalt, the water from them quickly drying on his thin coat in the heat. The sound of the tide lapping upon the shore mixes with the gust of the wind in his dark ears, the midday sun hot as it bears down on him from its zenith in the clear blue sky, and while a lesser horse in his situation might see this region of the Islands as a wasteland, inhospitable to the concept of life itself, to the Marwari it feels like home.

At least, it reminds him of what home used to be. He was born a colt of two worlds, his sire a wandering tribesman from Anequina, his dam the prized daughter of a well-to-do Pelletine merchant deep in the Moon sugar trade. True, he'd cut his teeth in the Tenmar forests, and when he had joined the ranks of the Thieves' Guild, he'd found his footing in the marshes of Southern Elsweyr, but he'd spent more than enough time in the Northern deserts to appreciate their ruthless beauty. The unforgiving nature of places like this, the amount of sheer, dumb luck involved in one's own survival... it fundamentally tries to kill you, and this is what entices him towards it. If he wants to make it in a place like this, he has to work for it, to crack the code that wins him all the marbles. It's a game - and as with every other conquest, Khajiit always plays to win.

The breeze kicks up, salt stinging the half-healed scrapes over his withers, and he smirks at the memory of the mare who'd put them there. Switch is another riddle he loves to solve, one with answers that change wildly, sometimes by the minute. Discovering the winning combination is always so sweet with her, rolled in so much spice it gives him stomach ulcers, and the latest in particular was one of his favorites. Go get her, he hears, the ghost of her voice woven into the hot air brushing back his mane. Go get her, mi querida... and I will do whatever you want, punctuated by her trademark seal of approval: her teeth on his withers, spilling his blood like crimson ink upon the pearly Atlantean sand.

Is his newly-earned epithet a curse, or is it something real? He neither knows nor cares.

Khajiit slinks inland, cutting a winding path between the slopes. True to Switch's word, he catches Fiero's scent over mostly everything, evidence of his presence hidden in plain sight like little burying beetles. As much as he might, ah, enjoy the pleasure of the striped stallion's company, he cannot lose sight of his original goal: finding the filly his sharp-fanged panther called Cat. A perfect mix of her parents, according to his read of her mother's description, and an adventuring sort to boot, if this foray across Islands is any indication. Khajiit smirks, eyes alight for signs of his dazzling, curly-eared renegade, and imagines the tantrum he will face when he delivers her back to her mother in the Shore.

Well, no matter. Catalina is the first of many wayward trinkets, and by the time he's done harvesting all the seeds he'd sown, both this autumn and last, she'll have plenty of playmates to keep her company. Once he has her, he can win her, too, just like he'd won Switch, and Fiero before that.

Blessed be, he thinks, and quickens his loping pace, doggedly continuing his game of seek-and-find.