People change when they come back from war. That's what all the stories Visla read in her youth told her. A man returns with bloodstained hands to a society that no longer needs him, that was the way it went sometimes. Other times he came back a hero and lived happily ever after. Either way, something within him was always different somehow. Visla felt about the same as ever.
The wind whipped through her hair and the sea churned all around the small ferry as it cut its way through foaming waters. Visla glanced over the side and thought that perhaps this was why she felt no different. Waves crash, whirlpools swirl, the sea is never in the same place, but no one would say it truly changes. People look to it as a constant, a place of return, a lifespring eternal.
Visla knew no one would ever describe her that way, but still. Maybe no matter how much her life battered her against the rocks or dragged her into the depths, it was always the same life. Killing a few clerics, living in a nation torn apart, seeing the evil that men do, these were not the sort of things which could change her. It would take a hurricane the likes of which none had ever seen to change the face of the ocean.
Shaking her head free from the clinging thoughts, she turned to the white horse beside her. It was unusually calm even as the deck rocked up and down. She wondered if it had endured a much longer crossing to bring it to Salvar. Its eyes sparkled with such an intelligence that she felt almost as if she could ask it, but she simply patted the beast along its long nose and glanced back out at the waves.
Even as the horse stood quiet and still, Aleva's hooves clicked against the deckboards. She paced from stem to stern, impatiently glancing for signs of land. The coast of Corone had long vanished from the ship's wake and the island destination was still shrouded in the mist beyond the prow. Her face was a pointed scowl and her clawed hands were slung crossed over her chest as it heaved with frustrated sighs.
“We could have flown in a fraction of the time and for free,” the succubus griped as her patrol brought her close to Visla.
“You must have been training while I wasn't looking if you can carry a horse aloft,” Visla replied, her fingers now combing through the alabaster mane. “I wasn't going to leave Alfonse behind.”
“Oh, lovely, you've named it now. Next thing we'll be taking in stray dogs.”
Normally some retort would have lept to her tongue, but the constant banter was becoming tiresome. She let Aelva languish in silence until she could see hints of shoreline breaking through the fog. Only once a small wooden pier came into view did she move at all, pulling herself up onto Alfonse's back. Words only came as the ship came in to dock and the tiny vessel's nameless captain ushered the only passengers off. Visla rode alongside him, tossed a bag of coin and then called back to her companion from halfway down the gangplank.
“Heel.”