"Just what in tarnation am I supposed to do with this damned horse?" Salome Highscribe bitched to no one in particular as she nursed a bottle of pitorro by her camp's makeshift firepit. The rum was a special brand of Puerto Rican moonshine, distilled and then buried under the ground to age for a few weeks with chunks of coconut inside it. The result was a liquor that hit harder than a gunshot, and frankly, it was working on the elf as she slowly sipped from the neck of the bottle directly.
    Mismatched blue-red eyes cast a baleful glance over her shoulder at the soft chuff of the grey Sand-Dancer that was plucking at the reedy grass poking out of the beach sand.
    He was a beautiful beast, strong, powerful, and proud; a breed not too dissimilar to the Andalusians of the varied earths and Pandemonium.
    With Lucatiel of Mirrah's death it had only felt right for Sally to try and set the beast free.
    But he just wouldn't freaking leave!
    "G'wan! Git!" She snapped, shaking the half empty bottle at the horse, who only looked up at her to snort disdainfully at her attempts to turn him loose. "I said shoo, damn it!" The witch spat and she cursed. And she cursed and she spat. But no amount of spitting and cursing could make the Sand-Dancer budge as he casually grazed on the Caribbean vegetation surrounding the hidden little seaside camp.
    Sally's shoulders sagged with a great sigh of half-plastered exasperation.
    "Yer master's dead, you dumb hoss. She's not comin' back for you." The elf muttered, tired and irate. "And I sure ain't gonna ride you, I ride brooms not beasts." She said, rubbing at her temples.
    Another sigh and she glanced down at the trinket in her hand. A simple coin, stained with the brown splotch of dried blood; pressed with the image of a desert flower upon one side, and on the other an engraving of the very same damned horse she had been trying to shoo off for the better part of a day.
    "Tch..." The Highscribe heir grunted, hissing through her teeth as she reclined in her beach chair to brood some more, paying no mind to the fluffy black cat nuzzling at her ankle to try and make her feel better.
    Lucatiel of Mirrah was dead and there's no changing that. Normally someone dying wouldn't have bothered Salome Highscribe in the least. But damn if it wasn't hard to find good help. And the fact of the matter was that Lucatiel was damned fine help. It made the crabby old witch feel almost bad that it had happened on her watch as she hucked away the bottle in her hand, shattering it against the trunk of the nearby palm tree.
    "God DAMN it!" She snarled, irritation giving way to fiery anger. Damn that old sea crone and her dirty tricks. If she had just come clean and given up the mermaid's voice, Salome wouldn't be by herself on a Puerto Rican beach under the moonlight getting pissy.
    It's not like Lucatiel was the most chipper of conversation partners to have, but right now the chirp of the coqui and the soft hiss of the waves against the sands was driving Salome mad.
    A splash from the water drew the witch's baleful gaze towards the sea, and their eyes met.
    Mismatched blue-red locked on vivid scarlet as she stared down the mermaid, Ianthe, perched on a rock jutting out of the water. The girl had been the one to pass the bloody coin to Salome's hand just the night before, and the memory still... Actually stung a little.
    For a time, the two sat across one another, the witch silently nursing her regret like a keen and bloody wound while the mermaid sang, low, sweet, and mournful under the light of the moon, a dirge fit for a knight.