Rieva flounders for a moment, unable to recall the motions required to carry her weight on land after driving herself through water for so long. Her hooves carve backward through the sand, a waste of what little energy she has left, and she’s burnt out completely by the time she remembers to step down instead of kick back.
The dun mare is unable to release the grip she holds on Lucifer’s mane, and she stumbles weakly through the shallows until the water no longer supports her weight. Then, finally, the coarse black hairs slip through her aching teeth, and she falls to her knees in the soft sand.
She doesn’t remain kneeling for long; the terror of being left alone on an unfamiliar shore electrifies her, driving her to her hooves again, and she rushes to glue herself to Lucifer’s side. He has brought her alive across the sea, to an unfamiliar land. She has been uprooted from everything she has ever known, and passed through the eye of her fears. Lucifer is her only anchor to herself; if not for him, and for the son they share, Rieva might have thought herself left on the shores of the Bay with everything else. She would have no tether to herself as a person. She might have gone mad.
The only constants in Rieva’s life, now, are the sun — that she knows somehow will rise in the morning, no matter where she is in the world — and Lucifer.
Rieva
the sun hesitates