As the heat Of the day finally began to loosen its grip On the land, The birds having their last go at a Serenade, Kaylia Was finding that the dip Of the sun Into the horizon was increasing the amount of tightness In her shoulders with every degree. The death of the sun as it gave birth to the night Was always something that had made the muscles in her stomach tight and her nervous agitation increase, even if she couldn't remember why that was... Her stallion snorted softly beneath her, turning his black head to lip At one of her sleeves In a concerned sort of way, dark eye Focusing for a moment on her face. One corner of her mouth twitched up and she gratefully scratched at the side of the horse's nose.

"I'm fine. Look where you're Going before we both end up in the river." The horse whickered softly as he turned forward once again, as if listening to his rider. The improbability of such a thing helped Kaylia feel a little better as it made her smile widen briefly.



The two had been Traveling all day, Taking a delivery of horses out to a small farm between Glayde Village, a large town nestled at the base of the Ochre Mountain range along the eastern border of the kingdom, and the domain of a fishing population bordering the edge of a lake called Vista Shore, having met the owner of the ranch  the day before in Marivienna City, the largest city in the northern providence of Liodia Kingdom. And although She had made it out with no problem, she had foolishly thought that she could make it back to Horse Grass Ranch where she currently lived by nightfall. She hadn't been Expecting the monster That had exploded from the surface of the river, inexplicably shooting Something that looked like a rock the same size as her head in her direction. Her horse hadn't been too keen To stick around and find out. She had barely glimpsed what she thought looked similar to a hunchbacked frog for part of a second before she was more concerned with gripping the reins and holding on as the stallion turned tail And headed in the exact opposite direction of the way she had wanted to go.

Sighing Softly, Kaylia gently patted Storm on his shoulder. She didn't blame her partner, she probably would have run in the opposite direction had She been given the choice Herself. But It did put them into an interesting situation, one that quite logically didn't sit well with her. As her thoughts were tugged Back in that direction, she found herself wishing all the more fervently that she hadn't been thrown into a situation that put her so off course.

First, there was the unsettled and rather nervous agitation that she felt when the darkness came. But secondly, Kaylia had overheard several conversations back in the city about farmer's crops beginning to fail them, shriveling and turning black as if scorched,  where as they had been healthy and flourishing only the day before. Even their animals health seemed to be declining, getting sick,  and weak, driven to insanity and attacking their owners unprovoked, only to die hours later gagging on black bile or being overcome by throbbing dark boils that seemed to be consuming their bodies. Rumors had even begun to spread, always uttered with Wilde eyed expressions and nervous gestures, about how even a few people were beginning to come down with strange illnesses that not even the most skilled medicine worker could heal. The strange and frightening rumors had begun to produce shadowy images in the woman's mind, to the point where she thought she saw half crazed creatures crawling towards her behind every bush and hill, intent on her death. The idea was silly and childish, part of her understood that, but her uncertainty of why she feared the night so much added fuel to the wild and unfounded imaginings.

Kaylia pulled up on the reins As she came level with a pair of short scrubby Looking trees, swinging her leg behind her and sliding down from the saddle. After Removing the bit from Storm's mouth, determinedly ignoring the way her hands shook as she did so, and putting it and the reins into a pouch on his saddle, She dug around in the bags until she produced a hobble, hooking it around one of the stallion's front legs before unfastening her bedroll and beginning preparations for her camp. When she finally had her bed to her liking and a small fire crackling in a comforting way, Kaylia went to Storm and unlatched his  saddle, allowing it to fall to the ground before collecting a brush from within another pouch and beginning to rub her partner down for the night, forcing herself to concentrate on every motion she made to keep herself from allowing her thoughts to slip back into nightmares.