Climbing takes effort. It is nothing like churning her legs through the waves, though her muscles burn from the sudden hike in slope. Reef is forced to slow down, lest she drain all her energy in these first seven steps. Her breath comes hard. All around her is rocky earth and a riot of greenery, all different shades of leaves far larger than on the first isle. The trunks of the trees here, too, are dressed differently. She slows further, then pauses to investigate a huge red bloom to the right of her path as she catches her breath.
Behind her comes the sound of hooves, and she leaves off her discovery to look over her shoulder. Lingering amid the trees is the vague shape of a horse. It's difficult not to be smack-dab in the middle of this forest, which has sprung up abruptly above the shoreline and poses a very real threat of obscuring the ocean from her. Reef tips an ear toward the sound of the surf and swivels the other to catch the stallion's words. His voice is rough, gravelly, a little like a landslide of pebbles clicking together underhoof. Not at all unpleasant.
"It's steep," Reef agrees between breaths. She moves closer, bracing herself against the incline as she descends only a couple of steps, unwilling to relinquish much more of the upward progress she's already made. Peering through the verdant undergrowth, she is able to make out little more than that his dark coat is patched in places with white. So far he looks like a normal horse— but she wouldn't have been surprised if he, too, were as strange looking as these trees.
The mare tips her small head back toward the hill she had been climbing. "I want to see the cliff, the one jutting out over the ocean. Is it.. Will it take long to get there?" She had not planned on a day-long adventure to reach her destination, but neither is she in any real hurry to return anywhere. Still, an hours-long climb of such a steep path is daunting. Perhaps she should rethink her intentions and return to the beach. She trains both ears on the stallion and offers with an unself-conscious smile, "I'm Reef." |