It was not the night as they knew it. It had been something different, but that has been something Islay has come to associate with living. Things never can quite go to what they were. Change is an inevitable force, something that surrounds them as much as the dark of night and the light of day. It had been the first trial that Islay had experienced, but she had overcome it. It had been surviving the Eternal Night that told her that she could endure her captivity in the Pampas and that regardless of what had happened on the mainland, Islandres would be fine.
Islay smiles as Aedan ruffles her blue-and-white mane and lowers her head so that it’s easier for her to imagine again what this had been like when she had been small and it had been easier to fit in the crook of her father’s shoulder. I’ll always need you, she thinks, and though she doesn’t say it out loud, the way that the young tobiano settles against her sire’s broadside certainly does. Her star-summoner father might wander in pursuit of her mother or perhaps even the heavens themselves, but it will never change how she feels now. The way she feels safe and protected, listening to the soft lullaby of the waves behind them.
”Gale left me the island,” she goes on to explain; it was another reason why she had never ventured far. Islay might not want to be it’s leader, but it felt wrong to abandon the island completely. ”It felt wrong to just… leave.” She admits quietly, ”even when the earth shook.”
Should she admit to Aedan that she was afraid of leaving again?
Could she leave Islandres again?
"Do you think we should go look?" Islay asks him softly, her voice sounding fainter, suddenly much younger and unsure.
@Aedan
![[Image: lSYWxe.png]](https://img.nickpic.host/lSYWxe.png)