Nightmares.

I did not consider myself a fragile mare, one who would curl in a ball and weep tears when the night did not seem to end; I did not like the darkness, admittedly, but I survived, even if I longed for the shine of stars with my entire being. It was easy to get lost, flying above the world in silence and shadow, nothing ruffling the bleak black but for the whisper of my feathers. With nothing to decipher the difference between night and day, I landed and rested when I felt like it, and took to the skies when I woke, despite the thinness of my body and the weakness of my delicate limbs. Here in the air, I felt safer, less like eyes were watching me and more like the night was guarding me from harm. Night had not terrified me before the eternal darkness, and I was determined to not let it now, simply because my glorious stars had been swiped from their beds.

Yet nightmares had begun to curdle my once-peaceful rest, terrible dreams that murmured of monstrosities prowling the darkness. Red eyes and broken wings, thrashing legs and gaping wounds, shiny ebony flies clustering on sightless eyes, an antlered stag laying in the earth, ripped and shredded into something nigh-unrecognizable. Horrible images, dreams of disturbed darkness that plagued me constantly, until I shuddered at the very thought of sleep, and flying became me. I was afraid, and I was ashamed of that; I wanted to be home in my land of red sand and sweet green grass, wanted to be cradled under a mother's sheltering wing. I wanted so many things, I longed and hoped for what I knew would never come. Someone who understood the unshakable fear that curled outwards from my heart and blackened my mind, who would protect me when I cringed.

Coward, I told myself.

I was a coward, a broken dog, but I couldn't bring myself to land, not yet. Perhaps drawn by the same unknown instinct of unerring direction pigeons use to return to their migration routes, despite the blinding darkness only dimly interrupted by the faint glow of golden lantern trees below, I flew northernwards, between the mountains and up them, until I came to a meadow I once called my home. Furling my wings to silver-washed sides, I landed quietly, the grass dry and brittle beneath my hooves; I spoke no words, uttered no prayers, as I sought out the company of the tree I sheltered myself beneath on cold nights, watching the stars through it's dark leaves. When I did, I pressed my head against the cracked bark, inhaling the sweet earthen scent so familiar.

At some point, I fell asleep, and when I woke, the stars glanced and twinkled at me cheerfully; how long I slept, in this peaceful undisturbed sleep, I know not. Relief washed me in its soothing hands, as I gazed upwards at the moon, at the canopy of stars so distant and yet so close. This, I could live with, the sweet darkness glittering and gleaming with thickets of white. Everything was so delicately familiar; fragile childhood memories, and I didn't want them to break, not now, not ever. Images, crystal clear, painted on my mind with the deep violets and indigos of Mother Moon's realm. Me, flying among the stars she pushes out from beneath her wings with a swirl of obsidian feathers, breathing in the cool night air, landing in the drafts of snow, laughing and smiling. It is not been being alone that I mind, not here, not now.

There I spend my days, alone and undisturbed, simply at peace with the stars, until one day the stallion arrived, familiar in a way I could not explain, admiring the gleaming fallen stars- as I called the faintly shining flowers. For a moment, I skitter away, slipping behind my tree, breathing in its sweet scent, fighting down the fluttering panic in my heart. Panic of the unfamiliar and the strange... and then it fades. It is Green, not a beast coming to tear the skin from my muscles and shred my wings. It is Green, who I fought one day, and despite it all, he was somehow a gentleman.

It would be very wrong of me not to greet a handsome stranger in my field.

So I slip from the shadows, detaching my star-washed coat from the dark, quivering ever-so-slightly from finangled nerves; as I near him, I calm. Perhaps he can help cure me of nightmares... perhaps I can find a friend. "We've met before..." I murmur, moving across the deadened meadow, eyes shy of his face, feeling vaguely embarrassed for what should be no reason. Call it modesty. "I am Andromeda, Sergeant of the Throat." I glance at him, a warm smile curling my charcoal lips, and drift my eyes towards the flowers. "Beautiful, aren't they?" I sigh, when I wish I could say the same to him.