The wind came harder, the water rough against them as they shuffled towards the shore; in normal circumstances, he would be frightened by a woman who churned storms with her tears, or by being within the sea when it began to quake and toss beneath rising gales, but in this instance he is filled with the need to get the weeping mare to the shore and forgets himself for long enough to reach the sand and safety before worry for his life can clutch at his heart.

She leans against him as the sand buffets their legs, riled by the winds that have seemingly risen with the sounds of her sobs, and for a few moments there is only silence, and the howl of Cirrus’s wind and tears. But she answers him, after a time, a single ear tilting downward to catch her excuse.

It’s play off of his earlier questions, and not all that believable – but he takes in her coughs and sputters and decides that maybe swallowing some water was part of a deeper problem. Maybe the salt had burned her heart on the way down, where life had worn it raw. It was easy for the young man to justify depressions and random crying fits born from an emotional pain when he kept his own quiet sorrows, and while he rarely let them escape as the mare alongside him now did, he was envious of those who could find a passage through which their sadness can vent.

It seems his only wells within.

She meets his eyes with her own tear blurred and blinking ones, and he tries to smile for her sake though it comes out rather worried and lack luster.

"Hey, I know it’s none of my business," he says, "but it must be lonely living alone in the wilds." It’s a slight probe at what might be an underlying issue, but its also one that bothers him anytime he runs across a vagrant soul, someone without a family or herd to turn to. He had once spent an afternoon talking Ranjiri into going home. He could do the same for Cirrus, if it would help. He’d only just met her, but he rather liked her; she was kind, a rare facet to be found in strangers. "If, uh, if you ever need a place to ground yourself for a while, I’m sure Kahlua wouldn’t mind you crashing in the Edge a few days," he smiles, a soft and warm thing born of thoughts of his herd mates and the offer that had been shared between Ranjiri and himself (a promise of shelter, of kinship and trust), "I’ve made a lot of friends there. They’re good people."

@[Cirrus]