She loved the night. Loved it more than the warmth of the sun, or the golden rays it spilled. Her heart was stolen by silvered moonbeams, the calm crisp air of evening. Her drum beat to the vibrating tymbals of the cicada. Nothing felt more soothing, or simple to the girl. Nothing, except perhaps to include the feeling of freshly fallen snow. The smell of frozen pine, the beauty of an icicle clinging to a redwood bough.
Bly was born early, only a bit early, but early all the same. Patches of snow still clung to the earth then, breath still emerged as fog around your maw. It was fitting and it was beautiful, more beautiful than the filly could describe. The first thing she remembered about life, was the smiling face of her Dam, and the starlight expanse above her. An expanse she was looking at now, silver head tilted back with creamy tendrils floating down her neck. Night was perfect, here in the Gates she could see the stars so clearly. She stood mesmerized by the twinkling of burning gases, some perhaps ceasing long ago, their ghosts refusing to disappear altogether. There was more to the stars than she would ever know, more than she could comprehend. She was but a young girl and knew little in the ways of the universe.
Tonight, this night, that fact was to be a most unfortunate thing. Bly did not heed the howls that snuck across the meadows. Ones that were drowned in night song from cryptic insects, and went unnoticed on the breeze. It is much too late when sensibility finally hits her, when her head and her heart find each other. Both pound with emotion, mostly that of fright, which is the first of many mistakes. They are drawn to the rapid flutter of her life source, the stench of her fright. Her initial reaction to bolt, to flee instead of fight, is short lived. Her young, strong legs, are no match for the beasts that find her. They smell of death, of desecration, and that they are. Their very presence spurns her home ‘Heaven’s Gates’ and she will find no salvation within its borders.
They are magnificently fast, a bat of an eye and they are upon her, felling her in moments. She snatches a breath as fangs sink into her flesh, pulling her legs from beneath her, and she meets the ground. The yearling did not stand a chance against such supernatural creatures, not a chance in hell, or heaven for that matter. A rock strikes her temple on impact and consciousness is taken from her, the world fading rapidly from sight. Bly tries to blink away the fuzzy blackness taking over, as if that could somehow remedy her condition. For a while the last thing she sees are two pairs of glowing red eyes, surrounded by masses of dark mangled fur. A sickly scent fills her nose and she is out, succumbing to blackness like the last moments of a dying star.
She doesn’t know how she got here, nor does she know when. What she does know is that thick, hot saliva runs down her leg. Her leg that is clamped tightly in a razor sharp jaw. That is tugged down.
Down,
down,
down,
down into the earth. Most of what her sight would show her, is cloaked in the damp darkness that fills this place, this descending slope. She does see two burning red eyes before her, hears a rumbling snarl from her captors. It’s all too much for the child, and she succumbs to blackness once again.
