we drink the same water, we breathe the same air
There is a rushing sound in his ears, so loud that it is deafening, and it pounds a furious rhythm on the inside of his skull. It is cold all the way down to his bones. He drags one leg - aching and numb all at once - across the tideline, over stone and shells and stick and seaweed - everything the ocean has washed ashore along with him.
Slowly he shifts where he lies, forcing his eyes to open, unclenching his jaw, scraping his salt-shriveled tongue against his teeth. Wonders how much water he’d swallowed as he’d been tossed in the waves. Cough and spits the bitter water out and has his answer; not enough to drown, and that was good enough for him. Still, there is a rattle in his lungs he knows he should be concerned about.
But his body is bruised and battered (though, not broken), and he scents the tang of blood. His own.
It was enough to have him surging to his hooves, and despite the way he limps heavily with every other step, his glazed blue eyes fix upon the woodland that sprawled across the plains before him. Better coverage in there. The ground would be far more stable than sand beneath his chipped hooves, and if anyone was so foolish as to come near to him, even injured and wearied, he likes his chances better in the gaps between the trees, than out here, in the open.
He doesn’t know where here is, or where he had come from, or what had happened to him.
The darkness will be safer, give him time to rest and to sift through the scraps of his memory. If only the pounding in his head would stop. Incessant as the surging waters that cast him ashore. Water… He will find some he can drink in the heart of the woodland, of this he is certain. And sure enough, he catches the copper-tinged scent of fresh water as he picks his way with care, and beneath the roaring that still echoes in his ears? The hiss of water running wild.
But there, just at the cusp of relief that would rid him of his thirst, across the pool of water, a pale face - white as bone - watches him from the shadows between the trees. The scarred, spotted stallion stills, staring at the shrouded figure in silence. Transfixed it seems, but no.
Taking measure.
C I C A D A