the firestarters always get the burns
and the good guys never get the girl
She drifts on a drug-induced sleep, like everybody else. Around her, multiple horses have landed, gathered, and met. One male in particular might have caught her eye for a moment, but she doesn’t keep standing long enough to notice. Instead, she dreams so weirdly, it takes up all her attention.
The dream is vague like every other dream, with the edges of vision blurred. But it is at the moment, lucid too. It’s just as if she didn’t just drop to the earth like a baby giraffe, but has been lying down here all the time, and peacefully so. The white mare wonders briefly if this is what Kagerus experiences when she dreams, but soon enough, whatever she thinks doesn’t matter to Ilma any more.
There is an all-encompassing heat surrounding her, and it takes her a moment to realize what exactly happened. But now she sees: perhaps it had been an unfortunate wind, or the volcano finally did burst. The sky is white with ashes, the flowers surrounding her are red-hot and violently bright yellow and orange - and it’s coming her way.
She scrambles to her feet, feeling the flames approaching much more rapidly with each passing, quickened heartbeat. She forgets she isn’t fully awake; her amber eyes roll wide inside her head and they match the colour of the heated wall approaching her.
Wilder than even this wildfire, she moves. There’s no way to know where one goes. She wants to scream, but when she opens her mouth the heat and ash nearly suffocates her on it’s own. This is really, really bad! The white mare runs in circles, her head filled with a panic she tries to overcome. Every time she turns there is yet another flaming wall - like a maze, she feels surrounded.
Where did everybody go? She was pretty sure that she had not come here alone. She remembers flowers, lots of flowers, and Kagerus somewhere nearby, and someone looking at her maybe? Where’s he run off to then?
But her mind doesn’t work. Her voice doesn’t work. And soon enough, her legs don’t seem to work either. What can she do? Looking around, the circle closes, more slowly as if her dream is giving her mind time to think about a solution.
There is, in the end, one solution indeed. The ground won’t budge, but the sky might! Gathering what’s left of the sunlight shining between ashy white particles, she rises from the ground. Her legs feel hot, her tail and fur might end up slightly greyer than they should be, her hooves feel the heat licking at her feet as if she’s not allowed to cheat, to fly, to flee.
But fleeing is what she does, eventually. The fire beneath her roars angrily at her, but she goes the only way she can, and that’s up.
Soon enough, somehow the fire gets forgotten, and the world is white with clouds instead of ashes. It is only when she goes even higher, and finds the light, that she awakens. The sunlight kisses her face, and she lifts her head, frowning at her surroundings.
That had not seemed normal to her in any way. At all.
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