.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
Sweat glistened on her neck, foamed on her shoulders, dripped down her haunches. She knew as soon as she stopped she'd chill—but lathered with her emotion, saddled with her frustration, it was easier to keep going than to start thinking. Verdant pines and bare-bone aspens fell away to meadows, and then grass gave way to sand, and then she knew where she was going all along: back home. Here in the Blue it smelled like decay and the washed-up dead, like salt and summer; she heard the cries of the gulls, coasting on the wind off the waves, and saw the chopped gray of a winter ocean, a horizon line without visible end.
Here was the sea, her haven, and there on its shore was someone who both absolutely belonged and did not belong.
Chest heaving, sweat pouring off her steaming hide, Nymeria drifted to a halt. The stranger was... equine in form, but aquatic in nature. Where there should've been skin there were yellowed plates, and voltaic blue ran down from eye to foreleg, spine to stomach. Delicate, webbed fins clawed from bony cheeks and a muscled neck in place of a mane or forelock—and she had a horn. Bright, sharp, like solidified seawater; Nymeria could not tell if she (he?) was beautiful or hideous, marvellous or abhorrent.
She looks cold, Lilómiel thought, unable to keep his fascination from spilling over into Nym's brain. Curiosity piqued, the grullo decided on a course of action, breaking into a lazy trot towards the mare. Now that her drake (flying amongst the gulls) had pointed it out, the stranger did look cold. All her ridges were raised, and the fawning fins on her cheeks were clenched tight; but Nymeria, now that she was here and altogether too close to the fish-horse, didn't know what to offer, or even what to say.
For a moment she couldn't help but stare at Aquila's eyes, so bright and so deeply blue—and then she found herself blushing, embarrassed at her own bravado.
"You look like you're freezing," she said in way of greeting. "Perhaps I could help?"
@Aquila
Yes I lied, don't think about you all the time
All my switchblade words ain't aim to cut your sweet delusions
