The icy water rises up her legs and out again with the tide, but Djinni remains still despite the cold. It is a way to measure her breathing, to empty her mind of thought. The gulls overhead jar her from mindlessness eventually, their shrieking calls enough to break even the strongest of mortal concentration.
Djinni’s sea-green eyes blink back to focus as she shakes her head, backing away from the sea and onto the dry grey sand of the nerinian coast.
Her pied coat is crusted with salt and her frosted mane remains brittle as she moves, soaked and dried in the sea. She’s a striking figure, but most of the way through a pregnancy she is no longer the lithe and elegant animal she had once been. Still graceful, she is a bit slower, and she walks along the shore with a rather aimless intent, the wavering line of her hoofprints indicative of her lack of hurry.
She’s been coming her more often lately, mostly on dark nights such as this one. The iron grey sea that spreads beside her is in constant motion, and far out in the water she sees familiar sleek shapes buffeting their way through the choppy water. They know she is here – they have seen her – but their high beckoning calls do not sway her. Not anymore, not like they once did.
She has swum in dark water; she would not do so again.
A kick to the inside of her belly distracts her from more somber thoughts, and the grullo mare pauses, looking up at the sliver of moon. There had been nights like these in Nerine before she had left, dark and cold and lonely. The sea caves had been dark and empty, and she tells herself she had liked them that way.
She had been empty then too, of course. But some things don’t need more salt water poured onto them.
Ahead, there is a shadowy figure beside the ocean, and Djiiini continues forward without hesitation. She has seen him before, both beside Nayl and in the woods over Sylva.
“@[Lior],” she says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. It is distracted much more than it is dismissive, and she tries again when she asks: “I hear congratulations are in order. You and Nayl are expecting in the spring?”
slim build
smoky grullo tobiano
sea green eyes
visibly pregnant