Alannah found a knoll that was lit by the warm afteroon sun and very inviting, she lay down to watch the clouds roll by - something that she hadn't done since she was but a wee lass. When all at once, her heart swelled within her - and then, for no reason she could have put into words, the profound grief that stole over her. She sat up, hugged her knees to her chest and fighting back tears, she was trying to contain a hurt so intense that it made her breath short.
'Is my home such a terrible place that it makes you weep?'
Alannah gasped, looked over her shoulders and feeling like a fool, she hastily wipped the tears from her eyes. "What? No, no of course not. Who are you? You shouldn't sneak up on people like that!" A man like none that she had ever seen - stood before her. He appeared to be a very strong and stern man, yet his looks reminded her of the Señora. He was tall and with an air of command that made her instinctively afraid of him. Yet there was something about him, a sort of compassion about his man that took the edge off her fear, she couldn't explain it but it was there. Some distance behind him stood a black horse, who happliy cropped the grass: evidently she'd had been so wrapped up in her sudden onset of grief that she had not heard him approach and dismount only a short distance away.
"Did not my mother, the Señora Beringer, not inform you about me, her only son, Señorita? No? Well, then let me introduce myself. I am called Dominic, and it may well be said of me that I am truly the Beringer of this island, welcome to Lira Luis Pena."
"Wait Lira Luis Pena? This isn't Geheimnis?"
He chuckled at that and said "No Señorita, that island is not far from here but this one is definitely not it."
"This seems rather a peaceful place, but I had heard it was savage" Alannah said as though fending off the implications of the word that under the circumstances seemed somehow provocatively connected to him.
"Savage does not necessarily mean basic and primitive, Señorita,' Dominic told her. 'The basic and the primitive may be found in all societies and in all cultures, no matter how advanced they are. The term can also refer to the wild and menacing behavior of a creature or place that by its true nature will not endure the taming hand of what many may call 'civilization.' Does that make sense?"