[P] a forest fire by design

[Mantis]

YOU'VE LONG SEEN YOUR DOWNFALL SPELLED OUT IN ANOTHER'S BONES
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The breeze carries dust to get caught in her lashes, making her vision blur as she tries to focus on what's in front of her. Her tongue lays thick and heavy in her mouth and her throat feels like sandpaper and she isn't sure anymore if the sound in her ears is the wind circling through her legs or the blood rushing to her head.

After leaving Aed, she thought it'd be easy for her to find shelter again, but Mantis was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and money in her pocket and while she surely was used to climbing her way to the top, she wasn't used to digging at the bottom. Her hooves dig deeper into the sand underneath them. She did not know a single face she had encountered in the past few days and knew the desert that laid in front of her eyes even less. Was this supposed to be her new home? Rugged land and dry hills of nothing but dirt? Mantis was used to grand palaces, courtrooms and golden thrones. Before regret made itself home in her hallow bones, she swallows the feeling down and clenches her jaw.

Tough luck.

She catches a glimpse of grey behind one of the many dunes that looks exactly like the thousands she saw before this one. She has not seen anything other than the striking blue of the sky and the biting yellow of the desert in what feels like ages, so her vision focuses on the flash of color, heading towards it even when her legs protest.

The change in scenery is sudden. Hills of wilderness turn into lush green of trees and deep blue of water. An Oasis stands before her eyes, water making its way between plateaus of stones, plant life growing in it's cracks - Mantis huffs, maybe out of annoyance that she hadn't turned her head this way sooner, but definitely out of relief. The blood in her veins thrums as she nears the water, her breath creating ripples on it's surface.

She relishes in the way the dread that clawed at her heart loosened it's grip. It was only temporary, so much she knew, but it reminded her that there was more to come. She would not suffer.

She'd make sure.

@Raymond - ohhh boy my first post in like a year im sorry LOL

[Raymond]

While Raymond had grown up in the arid badlands and under big skies, it did not take much time wandering through the yellow vastness of the Mors Desert to decide that a proper sandy desert was not really his scene. It had taken him even less time to lowkey regret instructing Ruth to remain at Solterra's southern border, which made the proposition of fielding alternating waves of the Tarrasque's smugness and sullenness all the less enjoyable. But he had dealt with discomfort before.

If there was any horse horse that felt equally at home sleeping in squalid mud wallows as brushing shoulders with the political and social elite, it was Raymond. His self-esteem needed little shoring up and he was quite happy to lose so long as he survived, so hardship had never been difficult for the red stallion to bear, but he couldn't help but entertain a small sigh of relief when the vast uninterrupted waste gave way to a pocket of lurid greenery and water.

He was not, it seemed, the first to stumble across such a blessing today.

Instantly on alert, Raymond slowed as he approached the spotted mare bent low over the watering hole. Regardless of his intentions - and for once they were predominantly good and uncomplicated, by his standards - one could never tell how a meeting of strangers in a strange land might unfold, especially when one of them had no choice but to be lethally armed at all times. Perhaps she was territorial; perhaps she harbored a vendetta against the people of Denocte. Whatever the case, tucking a readied action behind his cordial expression was a small price to pay to prevent imminent stabbing.

"Is there room for two?" he called out, announcing his presence long before he could ever be accused of sneaking. Though streaked with the dust and sweat of travel through the desert, he seemed remarkably put-together.

Raymond.
"he's an outlaw loose and runnin'," came the whisper from each lip
"and he's here to do some business with the big iron on his hip."

@Mantis | sorry for the wait!