She is nobody.
Once, she was an orphan. A tiny thing, alone, her mother dead beside her in a pool of blood. And then she was one of many – the mouse-gray girl in the swirling galaxy that was Nera’s foal herd. But they couldn’t stay there forever, because they grew up. And Nera wanted to place them in Kingdoms and places of power, but none of the Kingdom representatives who’d spoken had captured the pony-girl’s interest. They were impassioned about their homes, that much she’d noticed, but there was something they were missing. How odd, to be defined as a person by where you lived.
So here she is, picking her way across the Field, alone again. Nobody, because she doesn’t know how she wishes to be defined. A murderer? There was no denying the blood, her mother’s still body beside her in the den (her fault, her fault, her fault)…but she has not killed since then. It does not lurk underneath her skin, the urge to kill, though she has recognized that drive in strangers she’s met since leaving Nera. A child? No, no longer. She has not grown tall but she has grown an adult’s body, and adult’s mind. A mare, then, a woman? Yes, but to what end?
Sloene stops, looking down at her own reflection in the clear water of the stream. Ice melt has gorged the trickle of water to several meters across, but shallow and reflective. She is white-gray now, the frosted ends of her winter coat obvious. But where she’s started to shed, a darker color shows: like many of the more primitive creatures, she will be a much darker, sleeker creature come summer. But not beautiful – not like the swirling colors that were her Brothers and Sisters in Nera’s herd. Just gray and white and black, and nearly invisible in the murky twilight. Were it not for the bright full moon overhead, even her reflection would be invisible.
Maybe that is what she is – the invisible girl.