[private] there must be something in the water; Islay and Fenwe

[Islay]

Islandres has been a quiet place to grow up.

Islay has learned to count her days with the tides - with the way that they lap against the shore and recede from their black beaches. But her nights, her nights have been a delight because she had learned that the moon and the tides are one.

(In one of her silly stories, the moon is a man who loves the waves too much. He sings songs like a siren might in hopes that she will come to him and they spend eternity this way. With the moon singing the waves to shore and the ocean sighing when it comes to close - a kind of existential force that understands they must come together and then apart to survive.)

The two-toned girl doesn't mind the return of daylight. She has grown rather elated by it because its return must be a joy for sun-marked Aestas and her magician mother who has a garden so beautiful that even Islay has heard of it. But the return of the sun has brought back the moon and so the wonders of night return to Islay - hours that she spends with starlight and mornings she returns covered in stardust.

This is one such dawn and though she is tired from lack of sleep, Islay is smiling. As she moves down the empty beach, who she thinks is Erne quickly becomes another creature. It resembles the companion that she has so often seen with Gale but there is an odd iridescence to this bird that the other one does not have (because Islay knows, she has grown up admiring Gale with his paler-than-seafoam mane and the wild blue of his brindled coat). The young mare stops before the calling osprey and lowers her head, more curious than cautious about its coloring.

"@[Gale]?"