her memories died everyday with the light...but at night, her dreams were aflame with remembrance.
the air was hot, hotter than the warmth of her dam's sleek side, and drenched in a heady smoke that choked her down and kissed her hide in shades of gray. the air, alight with the dancing light of a thousand flickering flames, was also alight with the screams of those around her. her small ears pinned to the nape of her neck as the wails of the wounded mixed with the wild scream of a great dark beast - could it have been her father? - his hooves flailing out in a desperate attempt to free the bonds that held him fast. the cacophony was deafening and disorienting, striking an innate cord of fear that told her to run far and run fast, but there was nowhere left to go. it was a trap, a wooden trap, and it was on fire, burning whatever serenity she had recently known to ash.
and then she was falling.
she was dimly aware of the thunderous crack of splintering timbers as bubbling water engulfed her tiny hooves and suddenly she was plummeting nose-first into a suffocating night devoid of stars that flooded her nostrils and burned her eyes with a salty tang. she felt the heavy thump of a body and squealed as a hoof met the tender hollow between her hip and belly as others joined her in her depthless mire. driftwood slapped sharply against her cheeks and knees, leaving small red trails where they bit into flesh, and then she was dancing with them instead of falling through them, rising to the surface in a school of wooden fish.
and then there was air.
wind and rain were the first to assault her senses as she gulped life, glorious life, back into her lungs. her tiny limbs pumping furiously, she tried to peer into the womb of the storm raging about her and buffeting her ears, but there was nothing save for the crack of thunder and the rain in her eyes to blur whatever bearings she was hoping to find.
and then the weight of the world crashed down upon her shoulders.
her strength was beginning to wane, not that she could have done anything to fight the underbelly of the wave from spinning her head over heels as it continued to push down from above. the sea was beautiful in her wrath from the depths, blue flashes of lightning lighting up corridors of purest blue and the trails of whitest bubbles that frothed beneath the surface. looking about now, she could see the dancing bodies of those like her, drowning horses; nothing more than a herd of shadows scattering into the current.
beautiful dancing shapes, struggling against the downward pull of death.
her legs moved, weaker this time, though insistent, pushing against the vast blanket of water that roiled beneath her, feeling for all the world like she was stepping out of her demise on the backs of those who lay suffocating beneath her. the surface was nearing, but the more she struggled the farther it seemed, like a butterfly chased, flitting just out of her reach. one step. two steps. and her lungs burned with the embers of her life, fading until her steps faltered altogether, too heavy, too sluggish to keep drilling away against the inevitable. and as the world began to vignette into blackness, she felt weightless as she eventually ceased upward motion and began drifting down...down...a jellyfish glinting to her right in the growing dark. she wondered if this weightless feeling was what the fierce birds of prey felt, idling on the buffeting updrafts on lazy summer afternoons. summer. warm. she could almost taste the scent of honeysuckle on the back of her tongue. she was finally learning what peace comes when the struggle ends; all save for a sharp and insistent tug at the nape of her neck.
sleep. blissful endless sleep.
her eyes tossed and turned dreadfully beneath lids crusted shut with the salt of the sea. for hours they jerked erratically until the rose-red light of morning cast its fingers and scattered the long shadows from her face. she lay still for moments that stretched like hours, unwilling to greet what new horrors lay beyond the shade.
a shadow cast. a tickling sensation along her neck.
as a tiny crab dropped from the tangle of her fuzzy mohawk and scuttled across the warming sands, her eyes blink open, bleary and disoriented in the too-bright light. a figure stands before her, a halo of sunlight making any discernible features invisible to the filly with baby-fur still damp from the vomit of the ocean. her voice, when she finally manages to cough the remaining fluid from her lungs, is cracked and ugly, burnt from the salt of the sea.
"are...........you...............
are you death?"
are you death?"
for death is a horse is it not? a pale beast as cruel and cold as the waves whose fangs had clutched her and swallowed her whole. she distantly remembers someone close to her, someone dark and blotched like her, but the memory is already fading beyond the point her sluggish mind can retrieve. and so she forgets this thing that seems most important to her for now, feeling nothing but the numbness that comes from absolute shock to the system.
"what is this place?"
claymore
seal bay sabino tobiano
example (CLICK)
6 months
filly