It was to him the miser brought gold... ROUND IV

[elve]

it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.

The seal disappears when she steps on it.
The bleeding slows, some wounds begin to heal up and scar over. Most wounds stay open, gaping, the blood starting to congeal but the injuries too great to knit themselves together so quickly.
She shakes, from exhaustion, from blood loss, from fear.
Mostly from fear.

She does not see the third explosion but hears it; the ground rumbles and her bones tremble. She sways, violently, keeping to her feet an effort she can barely afford to make. She has to find another piece of the seal, she has to do something with it, but she no longer knows what side she is on. She expected the others to all shun her, to leave this unknown little filly who was too scared to do what was right, and instead decided to do what was easy. But she was helped - two horses, maybe more (all a blur now, her eyes struggling to focus) - and she thought, for a second, that she could fight with them, against this darkness that is straining against the edges of the world.
She moves, with tremendous effort, towards another piece of seal that landed mere yards from her.

That’s when a flash of green catches her eye. Not green like trees, or grass, or even green like herself. This green makes her tremble (but then, what doesn’t?), but he isn’t running towards her. No, he seems to saunter; more terrifying than a beast who is galloping, ready to attack, is a creature that doesn’t feel the need to move quickly.
The green-and-red filly takes a step, towards the seal, knowing that this thing, Famine, is coming for her.
Something grips her stomach in its cold, hard fist, and the filly stumbles.

Hunger.

She is too young, too well-fed to know what hunger, true hunger, feels like. She wants - she needs - to sate this hunger; but it is not just food she craves. No, she is hungry for revenge, for a chance to make someone else the weak, pathetic little foal. She wants to be feared just as she fears so much.
She wants power.
And this desire fills her with a fleeting strength.

She doesn’t know where it comes from, but a burst of energy seeps through her, from the tips of her green ears to the bottom of her red hooves. She still cannot say which side she is on, she merely wants to be on the side where - for once - she wins. And so she pushes herself forwards, though every movement is still agony, though some part of her (some not-small part) still wants the filly to lie down and curl up and just surrender, though all she truly wants is some grass and some milk and the touch of her mother (Famine reveals desires that she didn’t even know she had).

The closer she is to the fragment of the seal, the tighter the grip on her stomach, the more she is torn between collapsing and carrying on. But she does (lucky, that the fragment landed so close to her), and she finally, after what seems like agonising hours, places one hoof on the stone.
She falls, her pulse racing, some wounds beginning to bleed again, curling up in the dirt that is now brown, not grey. But she falls onto the stone, protecting it with the fragile, frail outline of her own body, still flitting between green-and-red and nothingness.
She wants so much to close her eyes, but she fears (always afraid, even in her times of boldness) that she will never open them again.

ELVE