Shame wraps around me like a vice, partnering with self-doubt to chip away at my sense of who I was. I'd been a princess once. A beloved daughter betrothed - albeit against my will - to a powerful stallion. Protected by family, pampered, and coddled by those around me. I had chafed, then, at the restrictiveness of it all but I yearned for that comfort now. Every sense of who I was had been stripped away by this cold imprisonment, and my will to fight was ebbing.

It wasn't even that the Lagoon were cruel in the way they were said to be, at least not to me. I was not bloodied or harmed or tortured. Not traded or starved or punished. I was simply ignored, which, for me, was the cruelest option they could have chosen. I was not the sort of girl who dealt well with being invisible.

The sound of approach made my eyes flash open distrustingly, although there was an eagerness in those depths. If it was Garmr, he could have a piece of my mind, or five. But of course, it was not him. The only stallion that had ever acknowledged my presence in this godforsaken swamp in the entire time I'd been imprisoned here was Leif, and even he had disappeared. Instead, a girl slightly younger than myself approached, worry written across each line of her face.

She was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, her scent as much a part of the Lagoon as my own was. The distrust that had risen during my aborted escape attempt rose again and I remained silent for a long moment, weighing my options, until the possibility of companionship, though equally captive as I was, lowered my defenses. "It's alright, I'm okay." I spoke, my voice more hoarse than I would like from the dual swim through sea water. "I appreciate it, though. It feels like a lifetime since someone else has offered me such simple kindness."

I looked beyond the girl to the older figure hovering somewhere in the background and offered a faint smile in her direction before re-affixing my gaze on the younger mare. "You're captive here, too, right?"

My understanding of the Lagoon was still largely limited, despite the length of my imprisonment. I didn't exactly seek anyone out to learn the intricacies of a place I was attempting to escape, but it was hard to miss that most of the mares here slunk quietly through the shadows, attempting to bring as little attention down upon themselves as possible.