[AW] || a sea of sand {relic contest}

[Seraphina]

Long limbs propelled Seraphina along the dunes with practiced ease, quick and agile in spite of the way her hooves skidded in the sand. Darkness had fallen over the Mors, drenching the realm in dusk and leaving a pleasant coolness in the wake of its normally-stifling heat. The desert was vast and linear, so, for all the time she’d spent combing it during the day, she didn’t imagine that she’d properly searched half of it, especially considering that she had no idea what she was looking for. A relic of Tempus? What would it look like? Would she recognize divinity if she stumbled upon it, if the entirety of this god-forged land was in some way divine? Seraphina had hoped that she would know it if she found it, but after what felt like countless hours spent scouring Novus in search of the relic, she wondered if it was more mundane than she had imagined. Perhaps she needed to approach this hunt in a different manner, look at it from a different angle…

Her thoughts were cut short as she noticed the silhouette of another horse on the horizon; she squinted, for a moment, making out great, regal antlers and a spattering of teal against implacably dark fur. Venari was his name, wasn’t it? This made the third time she’d encountered him. Seraphina was tempted to leave him to his own devices, but she knew the dangers of the Mors – shifting sands and sudden storms, vicious snakes and heat…how many times had she stumbled upon the corpse of a traveler half-buried and half-rotten beneath the sands, and how many times had she been forced to give it an impromptu burial, offer her own solemn variation on funeral rites? It was more trouble than it was worth, but the Day Court had respect for the dead, so she had found herself a gravedigger many times over. She approached the stallion with smooth, quick strides, offering a, “Wandering the Mors alone?” when she was still a healthy distance away from him so as to alert him to her presence.

@Venari - accidentally deleted this response while trying to edit and then didn't notice it RIP.