Ridge

She was clever, he had to admit. It was irritating, but he had to give the girl credit where credit was due: she was doing everything she could to follow the letter of his law while doing as little as possible to betray her father.

They swam together from the snow-covered Crossing to the humid jungle shoulder to shoulder in silence. Judge didn't blame her, really. She had been given the short end of the stick, but her presence here was necessary for him. She was his bargaining chip, a little safety net, a guarantee that her father would keep his distance. As a younger stallion, Judge had no doubt that he would have held his own against his nephew, but time and illness and injury had withered away his ability to go toe to toe with other stallions.

He had been reduced to a life of trickery, a fact that gnawed at him daily.

The white-splotched figures came ashore at the same time, and while his own good eye went to the shoreline first, he could feel the filly's eyes on him. He turned his head toward her, chocolate-dipped ears tilting back against his damp and twined mane. "This isn't the Shore."

A multitude of emotions flickered across her face and she drew in a breath before finally shaking her head no, though she offered no further explanation until he took a menacing step toward her, his lips twitching over his yellowed teeth.

"No, it's not," she agreed apologetically, shifting a step away and dropping her head submissively. Judge had to admit she was good at this, though she had no poker face to speak of. Every time she tried to find a way around his commands he could see her mind working away, racing along the possibilities, trying to find a bit of leeway. "You said to bring you to our home island-"

Her voice grew in pitch as her worry did and the overo snorted. "You knew what I meant."

She glanced toward him, her big brown eyes almost catching the edge of what little fatherly instinct he had ever possessed before he tamped that reaction down and took another step toward her. This time, she shuffled through the sand to move away so hastily she nearly tripped, and the words she offered were no better, a conglomeration of word vomit offered in an attempt to appease him with no confidence behind any of it.

She was making it up as she went, and he knew it.

"But, um, I figured you maybe wanted to make allies. I could maybe help if I knew what you wanted?-"

He watched her for a moment longer, surprised she hadn't seen through him given how strangely intuitive she'd been so far. "No." He offered only a single word in reply, and then turned his vision inland again. Nothing had yet disturbed the treeline, but he had a feeling they would not be alone here long.