~ never ever mistake her silence for weakness
Remember, the air stills before the onset of a hurricane.

Quietly she had followed the onyx washed stallion from the crossing isle into the sea and onto the frigid shores. The silence between them had grown until she could barely cast a glance in his direction. She should of fought him, protested his claim, and then escaped deep into the shadows... yet, without a single word of protest she followed him.

The salty sea washed around her knees as she paused within its hissing surf. She raised her dark honey eyes to draw in all that presented itself to her - from the majestic snow-capped peaks that scrape against the broody clouds to the dark pines that jut from the cold earth. It is like nothing she has ever seen before. All of her life she has known the hardened, sultry windswept sands of Mahrib beneath her hooves and then those of Salem. But never before has she seen such majestic peaks nor the frigid land that stretched out before her.

She casts her honey gaze toward the onyx stallion as she steps from the sea's grasp and onto the pebbled shore. A frigid wind whips down from the peaks and pushes itself into her thin coat - as if to protest her arrival - involuntarily she shivers against the cold. She takes another step and then another until she has left behind the sea and the pebbled shore.

"Dhaniya!"

Her steps faltered. The voice was so familiar as if it were straight from the recesses of her mind. Rigel? Confusion furrows her brows as she pivots to find Rigel stumbling toward her. Her breath stills in her throat as she is confronted with her past, he is just as handsome as she remembered him - as dark as the midnight sky, spattered with a million stars across his side. "Rigel?" she whispers as the distance between them closes.

Dhaniya, tell me it isn’t a mirage, that I am not dreaming back in the hovels meant for Mahgrib’s prisoners!

"It is me..." she pauses as she slides the onxy stallion a glance unsure of his reaction to Rigel's appearence "Wh- wh-what happened to you?" she asks as her honey gaze slides over his protruding hips and ribs. What had happened to him since their parting all those months ago?