Agnieszka
Her dappled markings are dark with water, and the tendrils of her mane have begun to freeze into icicles. She is tripping along the beach and discovers other arrivals. Briella, Santana, Ether, Leilan. These former travel companions appear and she moves toward them hoping to find Wane. He is a stronger swimmer than she is and must be with the others already. When she does not pick him out she pauses, does not join a group, and then the fairies' mercy keeps her still.
Even on this distant edge of Beqanna magic reaches, rescues these many souls from hypothermia and death.
Dried, warmer, and more clear headed, she looks up the beach where two paths lead away into the snowy landscape. Wane is not there. Before she can weave through the others and look for him, a storm roars to life. The isle is unhappy with her many trespassers.
Blinded, Eszka calls out to those she had known were close to her. She walks forward, blinking against the gale as it strips the tears from her eyes and finds no one. The tide, whipped up by the storm, lashes against the frozen shore and the mare shies away, bounding up the beach before the sea can reclaim her. Panting from the exertion of this flight after her hard swim she hesitates only long enough to guess her direction. Then, dropping her head low so that she might at least see where she is putting her feet she begins to seek out the trail-heads.
Alone. It's easy to feel forgotten in the white-out. These past days with Wane have fortified her and made it easy to exist in this scarred and half-empty body. She feels his absence like a fresh wound.
There is a moment in the braying of the wind that she is certain she hears him call her name, convinced that she can pick out his tenor in the storm choir. She arcs north, but cannot determine the direction his call had come from. Eszka decides that she has imagined it, her anxious mind creating the comfort of his voice from the whistle and moan of wind.
There can be no more lingering. She has reached a path. The right? It must be. She will go right.
For all the horses that had been on the beach only a few minutes ago she encounters no one. Several times there is a dark shape in the haze or a voice through the falling snow. Agnieszka resists the temptation to try and join these specters, she cannot risk being lead astray. Others have gone this way, she steps where they have stepped. The wind tries to take her off her feet, but she is strong and steady and only falters once or twice when a drift catches her off guard. She hopes someone is keeping Briella safe, blocking the wind for her.
Again and again her thoughts turn to Wane, she must trust that he is safe and is somewhere on the way to the pond. Another dozen steps and they will be together. So she takes those dozen steps and then a dozen more after that because he must be at the end of those.
an unequaled gift for disaster
