It isn’t the sag of my muscles that draw my bones closer to the ground nor the heavy weights attached to my eyelids that betray to me just how spent I truly am. In the end it is my true and obvious lack of vigilance that shocks me into reality. I’d come into this foreign place under the mistaken idea that I was alone and yet when a voice rises from the plush grass I’d deemed uninhabited I muster a small startle beneath the weight of my exhaustion. A stallion materializes, nested in the knotted underbrush. Even though he’s lying down I can tell he’s easily much larger than me and we exchange a moment of contemplation. I get the feeling he’s sizing me up and although I know I’m no match for him I suppose it only makes sense that he might have a bit of doubt surrounding a stranger that woke him from his slumber. He seems willing to take the benevolent route and although nothing about him seems threatening, I hover a few yards away, filled with growing uncertainty.
 

I can feel a bit of tension slip from my muscles when the stranger speaks. He calls himself Tembovu and he seems to know Mauja. That in itself is a relief to me and even if I don’t find the speckled stallion right away, I’m confident that I found my way to the Edge. I watch him dumbly as he speaks again, nodding a heavy, single nod in agreement with his observation of my overly-tired state. Not for the first time today, I momentarily forget how to use my voice and after a brief fight with the dead weight of my tongue I manage to blurt out “I’m Sabriel.” And then Tembovu begins to move and I imagine a mountain rising out of the earth as he motions to stand. He shocks me twice, once with his bulk and once with his generosity as he offers me the bed he’d just inhabited. I inch forward, drawn purely by my body’s primal desire for sleep, but I’m stopped in my tracks when my name echoes back to me.
 

“Mauja.” The name comes out on a sigh of relief and I turn to look at the stallion whose looks so resemble my own. His surprise is evident on his expression and in his tone and yet I can still detect the same, unfamiliar emotion lacing his words that had confused me so at the Threshold. I can’t fathom what might be making Mauja so…sad, perhaps, is the best word I’ve got for it. And yet I have little time to ponder it because even I am not so dense to miss the real question hiding in his surprise. “It sounded like home.” I’m aware of the sharpness that had snuck into my voice and I shrink back from the words even as they fall from my lips. I’m more tired than defensive but even then I worry that perhaps Mauja had time to rethink the scene at the Threshold. I wonder in silent anxiety if I am as welcome here as I thought.