The cliffs are at her back, the ocean at her front. It roars as the gale strengthens and whips her mane into disarray. Like a statue, Nayl doesn’t move as though cursed by Medusa herself. Her autumn eyes are drinking in the distant horizon where it seems no other land lies. Even in this new Beqanna they are secluded. Some days she wonders if there is an entirely different world, but then she is content to think they are alone and never scrutinized by another kind. She wonders where newcomers stem from when they arrive to these shores and adopt Beqanna as their new home. The question has often come to mind, but never fallen from her tongue.
The uncertainty hovers like a cloud until there is a clap of thunder overhead. A storm is brewing and still she remains unyielding to the howling wind and groaning palm trees. It’s only until a pelting rain stabs into her skin like needles before she turns and takes refuge at the mouth of a cavern – one of many here – and continues to watch Mother Nature take its course.
It will take longer than a few months until they have all adapted to changing seasons and a coastal gale. Her skin is suddenly riddled by a chill, but it subsides quickly enough when she turns her eyes away for the first time in what seemed like hours. Sand churns roughly beneath her hooves – dry, grainy – and her jaws clench together in response to the change of terrain. It isn’t a moist soil that mutes her footsteps anymore, but awkward sand that she has only ever associated with death (mother and father’s bodies come to mind, swollen with decay). She says nothing; she doesn’t even search for company as she knows how minimal it is nowadays. The sisterhood is withering – they are no longer the Jungle Amazons.
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