The hot sun beat down on the wind blown dunes mercilessly. Salem was an island built for the toughest of horses. Horses like Nyimara herself. Scars of silver littered her mahogany skin, hidden here and there by the long tendrils of her ivory mane. Small tipped ears pitch forward as paper thin nostrils flare to inhale the arid winds that billowed over the rolling hills. The dunes might appear to be uninhabitable to some, but to Nyimara, it was perfect.

The desert felt stagnant, its land unchanged and indifferent to the passing of one herd to another. She had been over it long before she left its shores. The dunes offered her something different and unfamiliar. Excitement thrummed excitedly through her veins. It was revitalizing.

Needless to say, the moment the black stallion’s deep baritones break through the silence that has built itself up around her. Dark eyes flash as defensively, the silver haired woman takes a step forward, prepared to launch herself across the shallow waters in an effort to defend her new home from the invader. It was not until the stallion stepped from behind the thick curtain of reeds that Nyimara recognized him for who he was. A child of Rougaru if she ever saw one.

There were times in her life when she wondered why it was that she shared very little characteristics of her sire beyond the similar coloring of their skin. Where Rougaru was built tall and strong, Nyimara sported the much finer lines of her desert bred mother. Perhaps that was why she found Salem far more appealing than any other island. The colt who did not talk, (for that was what she remembered most about him from the last time she sought refuge in Atlantis), is no longer a colt. Yet another reminder to her of the years passing her by. The obsidian stallion with his strikingly curved ears stares at her with those fierce golden eyes as though he too wondered if there was any recognition of him in her memory. Yellow stained teeth clack together once in warning as Nyimara closes the distance between them with her proud head held firmly in place by the strong curve of her neck. Unusually long silver white tail flicks droplets of water about her as she passes, wading through the knee deep reeds to halt just in front of him. Curiosity cocked her head to the side as she let her own gaze ravage him.

Though young, he cut a very handsome image of a stallion. Thick muscles bulged beneath his summer sleek coat. Unlike many other dark horses she has known in her lifetime, the boy’s coat held an appealing sheen even when hidden beneath the sheltered shadows of the swaying palms. Like Rougaru, the darkling sported a thick weave of mane and even thick feathers along the trunk-like legs that supported his tall body. A fine specimen of a stallion if she ever saw one. Had she not known him for a sibling, surely the desire to flirt and flaunt her curves would not be passed up right now.

But that does not explain to her why he is here now or what has happened to Rougaru. Her venture to Paradise had yielded little results in her ultimate goals and instead left her with more questions. Questions that perhaps this boy might be able to answer. ”Did Rougaru send you?” she asks, raising a single brow suspiciously. It was something she would not put past the damned old wolf. That did not explain why he had disappeared from Paradise however or where it was that he had gone.

Stretching out her neck, Nyimara brings her muzzle close to his own, inhaling the strong odors that linger on his flesh. Tinuvel. She recognized the scent of cedar and snow anywhere. He too had not been on Atlantis for some time now himself. So why was it he was here sniffing around her borders? Dark ears twitch and a flash of annoyance gleams in her eyes. ”Why are you here?” she asks, suspicion rising within her once again. If he thought she would merely stand aside and let a sibling take the dunes from her before she even got a chance to explore it then he had another thing coming.