[private] someone whose course is steadier than mine; islay

[Islay]

It's been just a few short weeks since their last meeting and yet their world has been turned upside-down. The sun rose one day to greet the moon and then the pair had stayed like that, intertwined in the sky above, frozen. All that remained was a dim halo that lit nothing.

Their world had plunged into darkness.

Though Islay knows the safest place to remain is Islandres with her family, she can't ignore the tug that pulls within her breast with each coming tide. She had tried to stay, for a time. Gale was their steady protector and yet every time she heard the flapping wings of Erne, Islay would look across the ocean to Tephra - to the Mainland - and long to be here.

So when the tide goes low and Islay thinks that Aedan won't notice, the painted filly takes one step towards the sandbar and then another.

(She is careful. She cloaks herself in the dark and the shadows, becomes nothing more than the soft hoofsteps on the damp sand. Becomes nothing more than a dark glimmer of something on the edges of someone's vision. Islay might not be able to pull her stars and her moon from the sky anymore but she can still wrap herself in the shadows so that she becomes nothing.)

The full moon hadn't come but Islay did, regardless.

Her white-and-blue hide is still concealed when she finally reaches the Tephran shore. And the warmth that floods her - that feels like sunshine - tells her who is nearby. The girl reveals herself suddenly and there is a bright smile to greet @[aestas] when her sun-marked friend finds her. "Aestas," she says and then adds, "I'm so glad I found you."

And not the monsters, she thinks.

@[The Monsters] please mess with her acid generation