By the precepts of her purity

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As they traveled southwards the threshold’s forests changed into the moist wetlands of jungle and after that they changed again, this time into the mirrored surfaces of the Halcyon Flats. After a few days travel however, the familiar sight of the island came into sight; hazy and vague, but still there, on the horizon. From afar strangers might believed it to appear as a secluded, empty piece of land. Perhaps even deserted, maybe. The tiger mare’s pace quickened to trot further up the dune hills where she watched the view of the isle grow more vivid before her golden eyes. “There it is!” She said, loudly, excitement brushing through her normally so calm voice. But with the salty wind having fallen into her face, pushing her mane around along with her words, she wasn’t sure if the filly had heard her right. She turned her red-striped neck to see if the girl calling herself Roots had been following. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Maren assumed she must be tired, she was still young after all, but they were almost there and the last bit she didn’t have to walk, anyway. They would sail. “Do you see it?” She asked before turning her eyes once more to the horizon. “It’s there, where the wind comes from.” It welcomes us.  

Maren was sure to not let it out of her sight as she trotted down the dune slopes covered in mull sand as she found her way to the beach. As her hoof-beats resounded against the soggy soils, another familiar shape welcomed her home. It was a peculiar shape, one that wasn't found just anywhere on any beach. Only when the Throat's Diviner was around, to be precise. Besides having dried like a tomato in the Sun, Maren’s boat still lay where she had left it. High and dry from the grabby foamy hands of the sea. Not like it would’ve preferred, she was sure, but save to be left for a few days. Her boat was after all a mirror of herself; when it navigated the ocean waves, it had this everlasting cry for knowledge of what lay beyond; What lay further than one could see — ever imagine there could be? And only she could hear it, respond to it, since she knew that pure need so well. Her boat wanted to sail that sea of endless possibilities, not lay here in the mull sand. Where it could only catch the fleeting scents of salty winds, becoming friends with hollowed shells — No.

She rubbed her head against the slightly backwards-bend wooden stem of the vessel, lovingly — Happy it wasn’t stolen. After all, someone had tried once and it could very well happen again if she was not careful. “I shall protect you,” she (boldly) claimed in a soft whisper to her utmost treasured possession, meanwhile stroking the wood with the feathers of her left wing in a slightly disturbing manner. But never mind that, since she suddenly remembered the existence of the foal she had promised a ride. “Er, yeah,” she scraped her throat before turning to the matters at hand. Thinking of their return to the sea and island-home, her wings now grew like happy flowers next to her ears. Her eyes moved from the ocean to the filly, back to the boat.  “Here, help me push it back to sea,” she requested before starting to urge the vessel to slide over the wet grains, making the most horrid noise when it did.



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