I'll be the light that guides you home(ANY)

[Lantern]

The Kladruby hybrid canters through the meadows that start to make up the Gates with a blazing smile on her broad face.  Her silky black coat glistens in the pre-dawn light, her muscles and solid bones standing out in relief as if she were cast from stone.  She has the nimble baroque build of her sire's Frisian lineage but the almost grotesquely roman nose of her Kladruby mother.  The only mark on her exquisite black coat is a broad but irregular purple blaze.  It glows like ultraviolet, her own little lantern in the dark, the trait for which she was named. There's not much for the yearling girl to do by herself so she makes a game of plucking up long strands of grass and blowing them into the air, trying to keep them aloft for as long as she can.  Following one particularly good blade, she finds she's not watching her feet and stumbles into a dried out husk of a log long overgrown by grass.  A squeal escapes her lips as she gives a half-rear, fleeing from her sudden captor.  Her foreleg is stuck, the huge hoof caught in snarls of grass and broken bark and twigs.  Giving a mighty rear, the filly throws her whole weight back, a precursor to the powerhouse that she may one day be as blades of grass tear. But it's not enough, her large forehoof remains clad in a boot of grass and twigs.  In her distress, however, she finds that she can still run and tears around the meadow, her three other hooves digging into the soil and leaving great muddy wounds in the earth.  After some time squealing, grunting, and galloping she quiets, flanks damp with sweat and her leg sore from the odd gait, her head hanging low so that her wavy locks drape down her aquiline nose.

[Tioga]

I squeeze my eyes shut tight as the dawn begins to break over the horizon. The blackness my closed lids became now slowly tinted with oranges and red. My eyes are truthfully becoming more sensitive, but my young mind has failed to make any concrete connections to this. Normally, I would have attempted to return to sleep, to laze in the grasses a while longer. This day though, it has something different in mind.

A ruckus reaches my ears, they quiver at the harsh tones, of distress and discomfort. I lift my head up, blinking my copper hued eyes out into the open meadows. Stray stark hairs have begun to spread over the bridge of my nose, soon enough they would canvas my entire frame. Finally, the morning sleep leaves my eyes, and I can focus properly. Another girl heaves a distance away, her sides slick with perspiration, I can see it glisten on her ebony pelt.

A rise with purpose now, this was someone that I indeed did not know, and I had met most the younglings of my herd. A lope gracefully towards the other, my stilts thin but toned. Whisps of raven mane stick out sporadically from my neck, having  not grown out just yet. When I reach her I notice she is in quite the pickle, one dagger lodged artfully in a stump. Her hide is unadorned, save for a peculiar stripe running down her face. It glows purple, much to my delight but also my curiousity."That's rotten luck." I say, though it is rather obvious nothing was good about this situation, except perhaps our meeting.

"I'm Tioga, would you like some help, umm...I'm sorry what is your name?"I ask not wanting to speak to her so formally. I can't help but stare at her unique mark.

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