STARLIN
grit and grace.

A cold winter wind is not the best portent of her journey, but it is what Starlin heads south with.

The once summer-sleek sides of the grullo filly are now thick with winter coat, a paltry shield against the icy chill of the mountain passes. The cliffs of Nerine have slid into the peaks of Hyaline some distance behind her, but the tobiano filly is too occupied with finding shelter to care about borders.

She ends up stopping rather close to the edge of the kingdom after all, in a narrow pass. The wind whistles overhead, but fallen trees provide a windbreak, and Starlin nestles into the somewhat charred smelling shelter, the ash scent weak against a few years worth of regrowth. Lowering her head to the ground, she prepares to wait out the storm.

STARLIN
grit and grace.

His subjects hold him in high regard – too high, it seems. Perhaps they feel it inappropriate to mention to the dragon king, but Starlin has no such qualms. He is not the Dragon King to her after all, he is simply a very sad looking stallion.

Once, she had found a body washed up on the beach of Nerine.

Starlin had told no one about it, but she had visited it for weeks, memorizing the shape of the bones as they emerged from the rotting flesh. She knows where they are connected, where they are weak. The knowledge has never come in handy (but how vital it will become when she begins to fight!), but she does eye the protruding bones of the scaled stallion’s hip with open curiosity. He is scaled like Guardian Lior and Prince Castile.

He invites her to warmth, and she is too cold to be cautious. In better conditions she would hesitate to trust a stranger, especially a stranger in a strange kingdom. But she only nods, and gives him a teeth-chattering: “Y-y-yes please. I’d like t-t-to be warmer,” that is punctuated with shivers.

STARLIN
grit and grace.

While young Starlin is the very picture of loyalty, there has never been any doubt that she has an independent streak.

Hyaline is not Nerine’s favorite kingdom of the moment, but there is still value to the mountain realm. They had made a haven up here, Starlin has heard, a land where those who want to learn can do so. She has already ravenously consumed everything her mother had to teach her; she is ready for more.

The horses of the north tend to look alike, an odd twist of fate. They are dark horses, splashed with white, a monochrome crew in their sandy grey kingdom. Starlin is no exception, and her grey and white shoulders shiver as they descend the mountain. She’d not have been able to find this path herself, she knows, and she is grateful that this bronze creature had appeared to show her the way.

The air around them warms considerably, and Starlin is shaking the last of the dripping ice from her dark mane when the stallion introduces himself.

@[Amet]?

This was Amet?

He doesn’t look strong enough to face down a coyote, let alone a furious Nayl.

Has he always looked like this? Surely not. The filly is frowning as she watches him, and an uncomfortably long silence passes before she responds.

“I’m Starlin,” she tells him. “I came here to see if you had any fighting teachers. It’s important to learn different styles.” Parroting back what she has been told is easy. She has done that already, watched the Guardians as they sparred, listened to her mother’s tales of great battle of the past. She has observed Nayl’s battle practice, and has kicked a dent the size of her own head into a piece of driftwood.

“Are you a fighter?” She hopes not, she truly does. If she has to starve herself to be a fighter, she just might jump into the lake to avoid it.