Nyxa
The skin around her bones feels too tight.
Nyxa is filled with a light that threatens to expunge itself any second, and though to outsiders she may seem her normal self, she's anything but internally. Whoever knew that one could be so ... happy?
This morning she'd slept late, feeling too wicked to be roused by the cry of gull or the song of the sea. In the shade of well-known Ischian shadows Nyxa had lost herself to dreams and the pure comfort of safety. When every breath was filled with his familiar scent, it was all too easy to forget the sadness of the past or the uncertainty of the future. All that was required of her now was simply to exist, and only for the sake of another's happiness did she do so.
It felt like freedom, true freedom.
So when she woke, the cream-and-evergreen mare was hardly discontent by the absence of her beloved. Hod had grown root and stem into the soil of Ischia - both their blood ran blue with its waters - and they'd always find one another here. She's not afraid anymore of his disappearing, or of losing herself; Their love gave her unmeasured strength, a force all on its own that she never knew could be real.
The feeling washes over her just like the waves do, when she finally rouses from her haziness to clip down the shoreline in a pleasent trot and dive into the waiting ocean. Silver-gray scales appear along her legs at the first touch of liquid, and her body grows sleek, tinting itself with an opalescant sheen. This, too, feels natural; everything in her life makes sense now, has order - she even greets her gilled companions with a rare, bubbling laugh as they dart between her tendrils of suspended, seaweed-like mane.
Why is she so happy? They ask her while she swims; her self-made current carries them along through the choppy, northern water and then into the narrow current of the Riverlands, "I'm in love." Nyxa tells them, happy to share the news (even if it's with creatures who might not understand.) In their simple nature, they don't mind either way. Her odd assortment of fishy friends is elated all the same, and they say as much up until her stony feet make purchase against the pebbled shore of Hyalines border.
She doesn't even think about Maugrim, the soggy old Riverlord, and how once she might've been too afraid to journey up this stretch of water...
Instead, she pushes herself with unnatural grace to the shore, a carpet of clear water gathered before and behind her to plant her feet upon the now-wet earth without her having to lift so much as a hoof. Call it what you will - putting on airs had kept her from looking a clutz, and without her constant practise, the powers given to her by fate would have been put in useless hands. "Is anyone nearby?" She tries at first, letting her scales and her excessive shimmer fade away while she stood, dripping.
-I'm sailing right behind, like a bridge over troubled water-
@[Ilma]