I'm not to blame if your world turns to black, anyone

[Chippewa]

Chippewa has never been so glad to lay eyes upon a river. Her thirst is terrible, and she cannot even remember the last time she stopped to drink - all the rivers had dried up to dust, or brimmed with a poison that made them bloat and die. Countless others had sipped of water like that, only to be met by an agonizing end as she stood back, looking on, unable to help. She almost ran to the river but instinct held her back, made her cautious in her approach as she sniffed along it’s edge before putting her lips into the clear coldness of it. It tasted good! Cold and fresh, and she almost caught a pebble in her teeth from the bottom to toss about but could not bring herself to act so childish. It was enough that she slurped her fill of the river until it dribbled out of her mouth, down her whiskery chin and splashed onto her feet.   She looked up and realized that a great forest stretched out at her back, dark and dangerous, like the mouth of a hungering beast waiting to snatch her up. Chippewa gave a snort, as if to show she wasn’t afraid of such a beast but deep down, she had to admit she’d never seen so many trees and so close together in her entire life. She had passed by forests but stuck to the outskirts of them, picking her way through brambles and barren rock before chancing places that were as shadowy and mysterious as a forest could be. Her kind, they did not take well to not being able to see the sky above their heads and she could not help but instinctively balk at the chasm of trees yawning wide before her. But she realized, she’d have to go back the way she came or straight into the beast’s jaws…   But it was dark - pitch black, the kind of night in which no star can be seen and no one knows what happens to the moon except that it’s hiding, most likely behind the clouds that just so happen to be there. She looks up again, a frown settling on her face as she stares at the dark. A sigh builds in her throat and rolls up out of her mouth and over teeth and tongue before she can stop it; a sigh of resignation, because the forest is no darker than the night and danger is danger, whether here or there and at least in the forest, she could hear the branches snap and give before something attacked her or so she hoped. Cautiously, she crept closer and closer to the forest before barging into it in a breaking of branch and bush as she tore down the trail at a breakneck speed before coming to her senses and slowing down.   Chippewa talks aloud to herself, more to hear the sound of her own voice than anything else; “What’s there to be afraid of? Some sticks and leaves?” and she laughs, but it is a nervous laugh as the little medicine hat mare walks down what she hopes is a path (but is actually the gray stallion’s faint and fading trail).