Typically, Nymeria considered herself robustly well-travelled. Her time as a wanderer, vagabond, outcast, loner—whatever one called it—had not been spent in complete idleness. In darkness and sunlight, she had charted the wilderness, every rise and fall of the land, every stream or river or swamp. She had even found the dead land in the south, a grimy landscape of black rot she had not dared venture into. Of the four herds, she knew the location of three, albeit not necessarily in name; the Throat, the Edge, and the Falls.

Except… never in her time had she found a place where it felt like night even in the height of day, or where the world glistened in a saturated red that was undeniably blood-like. It was the Halcyon Flats all over again—an unpredictable and inexplicable blip in Helovia, a glitch, an error, in the coding of Nym’s world.

And naturally, she needed to explore this mistake.

They delved into the unknown deftly and silently, taking advantage of the darkness and allowing it to conceal them. Despite how foreign the landscape was, Nymeria felt peculiarly at ease. The glistening red leaves, the artificial night, the distant thunder of waterfalls just out-of-sight… it fit her, in more ways than one. It was true that the Hidden Falls were supposed to be her home now—but this was… well, it was very much like the sea was to her. There was a hum in her bones and a melody to the wind that told her she belonged here as much as the Flats or the Blue or the Falls.

Her ears pricked at a muffled murmur of voices, indecipherable and at the very verge of inaudible. Curiosity piqued, she started towards the sound, Lilómiel drifting ahead of her.

It took a moment for Nymeria's eyes to make sense of the shape before her. Unicorn and cerndyr, shadowy beneath the blood-red canopy, had melted together into a dark monstrosity; her red eyes narrowed in skeptical thought. Flame bloomed from twixt Lilómiel’s lips, illuminating pale gold skin and an opalescent horn.

Unicorn, Nymeria thought blandly, and another one of those deer companions. The strangers reminded her of Thranduil, although Thranduil was refreshingly more masculine. Not that she had anything against girls—it was just… she assumed herself to know the ways of stallions more than mares.

“Hello,” Nym said quietly, her voice bare-boned and courteous. From out the shadows she stepped, cautiously taking note of the palomino’s pinned ears and clenched jaw. With her approach, the force of the waterfalls magnified, tugging at her blood and sinew.

Focus, Lil murmured.