Her legs were trembling by the time she left the ocean, but Rook didn’t stop moving.

With a last glance to ensure that Jester would safely make the shore, she stalked off with ears pinned. That bloody fool. He was welcome to enjoy Lucifer’s company alone if he was willing to place so much trust in a stranger. She, on the other hand, was going to find whoever else shared his home - and glimpse exactly what kind of King he was through a more truthful lens.

The only problem was that she didn’t know where those others might be.

Twisting her head to look across the empty horizon, the umber mare huffed and finally chose a random direction. Her pace gradually increased from a walk to a trot as she recovered her breath from the swim, sand clinging to the damp skin of her legs until they itched. What kind of place was this, anyway? Rook had never seen a place with so much blasted dust and barely a stalk of grass to be seen. This didn’t seem like a kingdom at all, but a special hell reserved for fools and the ones who bound themselves to their choices.

Hell.

Her head jerked upright, and her strides slowed back to a walk. Now that she'd had time to think away from Jester's endless chatter, old memories were surfacing. Half-forgotten stories told at the udder. Warnings meant to keep foals close to home so that the real predators wouldn’t gobble them up.

Nonsense, naturally.

But she was almost certain that one of the names her elders invoked was Lucifer.

Scolding herself with a derisive snort, Rook forced her legs to move faster like she hoped to outrun her own mind. It wasn’t particularly successful. As she ran, she wondered to herself whether the name could truly be a coincidence. At the very least, it was a name with dark associations - and she couldn’t imagine anyone willingly tying themselves to it. While it was possible that he came from a place where such tales did not exist, it was also possible that the choice of such a name was intentional. A dark title for a dark individual.

And she’d left Jester alone with him.

That realization was enough to stop Rook in her tracks, but not enough to turn her around. Mostly because she no longer had any idea what direction she had come from. All around her there was nothing but sand that crested and fell in shapes not unlike the waves. Even the air was unhelpful; it just smelled hot and dry.

It seemed that Jester wasn’t the only fool here.

Heaving a sigh, the oak-brown woman tossed her head and let out a call. Not a plaintive one, of course. Just questioning. She wasn’t lost, after all.

She was just - just temporarily misplaced.

ROOK
the river runs silent when the water is deep