The aquatic mare continued to watch the fluttering lashes of those scarlet eyes set in the cocked, skull-marked face. Those of the land seemed to blink frequently. Much more than those of the sea. Although, she reasoned with an annoyed twitch of her hide, the air was much more desiccated than the ocean. So, naturally, they would need to blink more. Did she blink more, above the wave? Now that she thought of it, she probably did.

A sharp snort left her nostrils as she realized this. She had been set against changing herself as she slowly shifted to living more on land; she had resisted the shift all together. But the sea here was colder, crueler, than the sea of the Rift— take today, for instance. Her luminous eyes snapped to the roiling, stormy waves. That was not an ocean you lived beneath, unless you were deep down, as Akvo had been. But the water was too cold that far down; there was no warm current, no warm ocean vents.

So her beloved ocean had pushed her onto land.

Her attention snapped back to the woman alongside her, catching the strange smirk that graced her black-snipped muzzle. Unblinking eyes rested there for a few, long moments— watching the smirking lips move to form words, watching the velvet skin crinkle around the pigmented diamond of skin between her nostrils.

But then her gaze snapped up, staring unnervingly into those crimson irises. “Go back into the water?” Her growl was disbelieving, ridges standing up along her face with the emotion. Was this mare mad? She watched, waiting, thinking: those here had magic (different magic than Akvo), she had seen it litter the battlefield and she had seen it in her travels around this cursed rock. And when had she turned away from water for help? It was her lifeblood, it defined her.

She blinked once. And then, snapping her fins flush with her skull, she swept her gaze along the shore, seeking some kind of pool. There were few patches of rocks along this shore; most of them were high upon the sand. But, luckily (loosely used), the storm had blown salty waves over most of them.

Curling her barbed tail tighter around her athletic haunches, the mare stiffly began to move towards the rock pools. Though the distance wasn’t incredibly far, it felt like eons to her cold, locked joints. Unclenching annoyed teeth, a new question sounded on her throaty voice, “What is your name?” A pause, and then, “I am Aquila.”