The blood ribboned out into the hot spring as it began to disperse into the water, billowing into a turbid pink cloud in the slight area it had effected. It wasn't but a few moments before it was indistinguishable within the murky waters of the spring, muddied with underwater sediments and dissolved minerals of the untapped arctic earth, and disappeared entirely as if the blood had never been spilt. And as for her words, spoken aloud to naught more than the steaming and stagnant waters, they fell heavily into the eerie silence of the tundra, save for an audience of snowflakes.
It took five full seconds for a velvety pair of nostrils to break the surface of the geothermal spring. At first, it seemed as if they would simply hover in the center of the pool, but they quickly swiveled about and advanced in the direction of the summoner. The kelpie knew quite a number of things about the being whose blood had been drawn: he had an iron deficiency, high blood sugar, was mildly intoxicated, but most importantly, he was male. The voice that had uttered the spell of Caspian's servitude, the beautiful sound that had pulled his fae body into existence at the bottom of the hot spring with a force akin to that of a magnetic pull, was female. Miniscule waves of disturbed waters radiated out in a butterfly effect from the body of the rising kelpie, gaining in strength as his entire body began traveling up the edge of the spring. The more the stallion was revealed, starting with his large head down to his massive flanks, the more ridiculous the notion became that a hot spring so small came to house such an immense creature. But there it was, a horse too large to be normal, too nightmarishly black to be mortal, marching out of the depths of a hot spring in the middle of the Sionad tundra. Per her request, that is.
The kelpie seemed to assess the situation as he closed the safe distance she'd put between herself and the warm spring, tossing his head slightly to and fro between the unconscious man, the naked girl, and the curious expanse of snow that bared no footprints. How could that be so; that two humans stood beside the spring, but without the evidence of their arrival? His own hooves left a trail of round craters as he trudged towards her, sinking deeply into the accumulated snow. Bowing his sinewy equine neck, he regarded her naked body with inquisitive eyes as white as pearls, awaiting further instruction from the one he knew, instinctually, had called upon him. The stallion paused in his advancement towards her, however, and halted his once-over of her at her feet.
She wasn't sinking into the snow? And she seemed wet, but he hadn't sensed any warmth from her body. In fact, Caspian found that he'd identified what it was about this woman's face that had given him reason to believe she wasn't human, and it was not the unusual facial features she possessed. It was water vapor. Like his own breath, as chilled as the arctic air, her's was not vaporizing upon exposure to the frigid atmosphere. And her body seemed to be wet with moisture, quite like his, but it did not some originate from the hot spring – he could smell the difference between the two. The dark horse took a cautionary step towards her, his oddly smooth ears folded back in a very equine way as he pointedly sniffed in her direction. No, the water on her body wasn't quite like anything he'd smelt before.
But the long, throaty cry of a baying hound in the distance had the stallion belaying its behavior, and twisting its body in the direction of the sudden intrusion of noise. Centuries of experience had Caspian clipping together details in a matter of seconds, gathering quickly that this naked inhuman girl must have been being pursued by some community whose ambitions didn't quite align with her own. After all, dogs weren't employed for much else than hunting and rescue parties. Considering the human male, whose blood he must have tasted and who was frozen in unfortunately immobilizing places, was undoubtedly the sacrifice she had to offer... it seemed to be both a rescue and a hunt. The girl in question? The kelpie galloped to her in three colossal sweeps of his legs, bringing his body in a protective proximity to her bare form, and potentially flicking droplets of near-freezing water at her from the ends of his pitch black mane. The girl was no fairy, that was for certain... but she wasn't human, she was born of one of water's forms, and she had to resort to calling upon him to serve her. That was saying something.
Incidentally, that something was all Caspian needed to know to bend to her will.
"They're coming for you," He informed her needlessly, his voice never emanating from his water horse form, but rather coming into existence as simply and questionably as he had rose from the springs, "Give me a command. Quickly."
