She ran, dodging branches and vines and fallen logs more nimbly than a jungle cat. All it had taken was a whisper of his scent on the wind to send her scrambling toward the beach, debris flying behind her in her haste. It would not be the first time that a figment of her imagination had sent her running helter-skelter through Paradise, but it might prove to be the last.

It was no figment this time.

Her gaze found Temblor first, reading the aftermath of a battle in the bloodied wounds he wore and in the upset expression on his face. Whatever had transpired, however, had already passed. She looked to the ocean, then, and felt her heart shatter. There was no mistaking the sunlight glittering off that familiar flaxen mane as it bobbed away in the surf any more than Rae could mistake the painted tobiano bobbing along in front of him.

He had come, but it was not for her.

She tried to call for him, to scream his name no matter how desperate she might seem in doing so, but no sound came out. Tears pooled and spilled so quickly that they did not bother to form drops, only slid in hot cascades down her cheeks as she tried again, and again to call for him, only to produce a choked rasp that was no name at all. In desperation, she tried to rush after him, running headlong into the oncoming waves in panic, only to be repelled by the break line. Rae had never tried to leave Paradise after the incident with Faelyn's father, and without the steady guidance of Rougaru at her shoulder, she had no anchor against which to lean.

Still, she tried.

Again and again she tried to break herself against that wave, to find a way past the impenetrable barrier, and again and again she failed. By the time the sea spit her back out on the shore - unwanted by all parties - scrapes littered her legs from where the waves had pressed her against the rocks, and seaweed wound itself through the tangled mass of her tail. Her slender limbs trembled, and as she half-collapsed, half-sank onto the damp shoreline, she keened softly and buried her face against the sand.

OOC: Technically open, but no responses necessary, but she had to get her initial reaction out, ahah