Though the fire in his lungs eased with the influx of air, it seemed to spread through his blood to his muscles, air starved and driven to work they were not used to. It was with great relief that he felt his hooves catch on sand and he waded through the shallows until he was out of reach of the worst of the waves. The surf still lapped and foamed around his hooves as he turned to see what had become of the sea-maid. His legs were braced wide, chest still heaving as he caught his breath from his ungainly dive. The wet had turned his coat to ruddy, salt-flecked pewter like a sword catching the red light of dying embers. His mane is slick to his neck, sticking uncomfortable and catching in the whorls and fern-like branches of the scars that bite deep into his hide.
The knight's good eye find her collapsed on the sand not far away. Some inner anxiety eases at the sight of her, alive and breathing. Slowly, heavy black hooves move across the wet packed sand to her side and he lowers his muzzle to just brush her damp shoulder, checking if she is conscious or not. He hopes she is- he's no healer and he wouldn't trust leaving her this close to the edge of the water to try and fetch one. Better if she can move under her own power. It is one thing to thrust someone along when they are buoyed by salt water and another thing entirely to try and drag someone on dry land.
"Are you alright, lady?" The words are spoken low and oddly formal for their current position. He lifts his head again and turns it this way and that, trying to get a good look at her. Trying to tell if she is hurt or only half-drowned. He cannot- does not- try to hide the mutilated side of his face from her. He is too busy checking for hurts, a little concerned that in trying to help he may have caused some hurt as well. She seems small to him, delicate. Fragile even. The more he looks though the more he notices strangeness. It isn't the horn that strikes him as odd. He has seen that before. It is her ears.
Long and curving, they are like little he has seen before. He shifts back from her, superstition warring with concern for her well being. It seems that everyone he meets here carries a stamp of the otherworldly, like the delicate gilded marking on Israfel's wings to now this. If this is a place for the fae-touched and fire-souled, what place had he here?
@Thaleia
