Under the white starlight, the stallion's silver mane and tail glowed like beacons that flared to life, died down, then flared again as he darted between shadows. His movement was awkward, more of an ungainly half-trot than anything else, his body stiff and his right foreleg heavily favored. To any that might have glimpsed him in the brief moments he was illuminated by the night sky, it would be clear that he was in pain. And he was: in more places than one. He stank of blood and sweat, and cuts and gashes gleamed wetly across his face and body. But they, nor the dark, could or would stop him.

When you had as many enemies as August did, travelling by night became a necessity.

He moved this way his first few days on the islands. During daylight, when the sun baked the earth dry, August would tuck himself in a dark nook somewhere and sleep — or try to, at least. More often than not his eyes would refuse to shut and he would stand, heart racing, muscles jolting at every slight noise, waiting for something that didn't come. Sleep deprivation weighed on him as night fell, but he pushed through, chasing shadows like a minnow in a pond, travelling through water wherever he could. Though the heat of summer lingered, the trees had begun their annual shed, and August mentally cursed the leaf litter every time it crunched beneath his hooves. He imagined Ira or even Boone dogging his trail like bloodhounds, their ears pricking at every slight noise he made.

Boone, maybe. But Ira was dead, he reminded himself. At least, he had looked it. August supposed it probably wasn't possible to recover from what he'd done to him.

Travelling like this was not sustainable, of course, and after several days his adrenaline had ebbed enough to send him sprawling into a day-long sleep on the gnarled roots of a tree engulfed in a deep thicket. When he awoke, the fog of his flight had lifted, and he looked on his surroundings with new eyes. The earth was thickly padded with red and yellow leaves. When August looked up, the trees were more naked than he remembered, bare branches reaching toward an overcast sky. A few birds warbled in the distance, and smells of horses that had passed through recently met his nose, along with dirt and rot. Nothing else. Nothing sinister.

He breathed for a time, and simply listened, grounding himself.

It was afternoon when he set out — still favoring his foreleg, his rust-red hide still criss-crossed in barely-healed bites and scrapes — but he was without that hollow-eyed look he'd had since he arrived on the islands. He must have been quite a sight, he figured, perhaps even a little intimidating. He did not anticipate being received with any particular friendliness. But, needs must and all. August needed to disappear, and quickly.

The mainland, the Crossing, seemed to be a dead end. Enquiries informed him of bachelor and amazon herds at either end of the island, but the rest was a no-man's-land, filled with roaming strangers looking for love or blood or both. August sensed he would find only trouble here, so he moved on.

The next island he found himself on was a wide grassland that rippled like a sea in the wind. It was just beyond the shore August stood, still dripping, silver hair clinging to him, the scents of the grasses telling him that to go any further would be to invite potential wrath. He was not in any state to earn more wounds. But he could not stop himself from feeling a little bloom of hope in his chest. Perhaps this could be it: his new beginning. Or at least some place to lie low for the time being.

He let loose a hoarse call.