[EXP] Thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

[Raymond]

There was something limitless and horrifying about the sea that demanded reverence even from those who would deny the same to gods. It could neither be denied nor defeated; it could not be reasoned with or slain by a thousand swords. All you could do was adapt to its tempestuous moods, the ebb and flow of its roiling and passionate reach.

Like Calliope.

The tide had retreated under a storm-grey sky, at last allowing Raymond access to what he had before studied only from the precarious height of Praestigia cliffs. He picked his way along the treacherously rocky path with a goat's brazen surefootedness, whip-quick and light on his feet, coming to rest with a soupy splash in the newly-exposed foreshore.

Raymond's chest still bore the vague specter of an ache where Asterion had struck him, but the wounds itching most heavily at the red stallion's mind today could not be so easily measured in flesh. Solitude seemed an empty thing now in Ruth's absence, and he struck down the urge to look for her skewbald sleekness darting between the various oddments vomited up by the tides. The thought cast a cloud over his face stormier than the ones overhead.

He breathed deeply of the briny air and glanced back the way he'd come. A dark sheen of sweat like  had broken out across the planes of his shoulders from the climb, painting him more like a bronze sculpture of a horse - all rippling muscle and proud, arch-necked poise - than the genuine article.

With a healthy shake of his head he cast his eye out to sea and started walking, contemplating infinity as he left a single set of hoofprints to dissolve slowly in the intertidal sands.

Raymond.
and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around

@Calliope <3