“You’d be surprised,” the painted mare said, flatly, unceremoniously emerging from the treeline to step onto the shore. She’d seen how eager others were to obey the commands of the Gods. Iona didn’t fault them that. Well, she didn’t fault them out loud.  She did fault the blind devotion to them. She’d seen those who could be called Gods corrupted before. She’d seen them fall from their pedestals and wreak havok.  She wore the scars of said battles quite literally.  The very thought caused her to shift her large black wings - wings that had nearly been torn from her sides by one of the fallen. 

Iona was not one to operate on something as foolish as blind faith.  The painted pegasus was a pragmatist, above all else. However, she had a healthy dose of respect for magic and what it was capable of. So if an immensely powerful magical creature wanted a pile of bones, she’d produce said pile of bones and be on her merry way.  And, all things considered, she’d rather sort through bones and mud than whatever shitstorm was brewing back at home.  That was saying something. 

She wanted to be rid of responsibility and duty just for a few hours.  So this seemed perfectly fitting to her. She absentmindedly kicked a piece of bone nearby - something that appeared to be vertebra - nearer to Syrena’s already growing pile.  Iona walked past the stallion, who smelled of something she could not place and joined Syrena near the seashore.  Iona knew that using her wings to scoop out the dead seaweed and smaller pieces of bone would speed up the process, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.  She took meticulous care of her wings and spent so much of her time in the skies, she was unwilling to compromise that if her feathers were covered in muck or broken by filth.  The salty air coming up from the cliffs at home was trouble enough with her feathers.

She watched as Syrena - who was beginning to turn colors where the water touched her skin - worked deftly to move driftwood out of the way.  After taking a moment to appreciate the other mare’s party trick, Iona pressed her shoulder against the next largest piece of driftwood and was satisfied when she felt it give way beneath her weight. She did her best to roll it onshore and tried not to grimace when it revealed a partial skeleton trapped beneath.  Instead of dealing with that she instead elected to deal with two larger bones in the curl of the sea, rolling them towards Syrena’s pile before looking back towards the stallion. 

“How’s that saying go...if you can’t bet em, join em?” She waited a beat before continuing, “Or are you afraid to get dirty?” she added, with a smirk.