The moment we plunged into the surf, I began to doubt my decision. The icy ocean kept trying to pull me back under, and it was all I could do to try and follow the blue-black stallion as we swam toward the distant land. He was hard to see, hard to smell, and so it was all I could do to try to stay close to him, visions of forests in my mind. In my haste to stay close to him, I am certain I bumped him a few times, my knees thudding against his rump or side or hooves. When I can finally touch bottom, though, my thoughts are hardly on the swim. Instead, all of my attention is fixated on the Lagoon before me.

"Um," I murmur as we wade ashore, my gaze roving across the view before me with obvious disappointment. This place was not so dissimilar from my home, although it was as though someone had turned the humidity to 100 and left it there for far too long. There was mist, here, to be certain, but it was not the cool, mysterious fog I'd always pictured, but a dense mist laden with the droning of hundreds of insects. "This is Luthien...?"

I trail off, knowing that I shouldn't be rude but not bothering to conceal the dislike in my tone. I never thought I'd say this, but I would certainly take boring old sand over this.

"Are you sure?" I ask suddenly, whipping my gaze back around to the stallion that had escorted me, my eyes narrowed as if he might be playing some sort of trick on me. I couldn't fathom why he would do so given that he did not know me, but I had learned from my brothers that boys often made little sense in general.