Her senses seemed to trickle back to her one by one. Her ears had been ringing, but as her mind tried o wrap around what had just happened they were fist to start investigating the scene. Meg could hear the murmur and hiss of the flames behind her in the pit. She could hear the a sizzle and a crackle and a hiss and her own wretched breathes as they were squeezed out of her lungs. Her nostrils flared wide as she began to recognize smells again, burning hair and soot and smoke.

The taste in her mouth was ash and dirt and blood.

Hers?

She could feel the blistering begin on the ends of her legs where the fire had licked at her there. She would have scars, too, around the soft skin near her mouth. Fire bites back. She struggled to bring her eyes to focus, and she saw wings dropped low towards the ground, shaking with intermittent tremors. They must have been hers. They didn’t look so very strange, her brothers had always plucked her feathers out, she’d seen her own blood before. In her mind, for just a moment, she was a filly again fresh from a round with her bullying band of brothers. ”Why aren’t you dead?” Megaera looked up and saw her father before her.

Panic! It was a sharp jolt back the terror of a moment before. Obharr had come back for his revenge and he was disappointed with her; angry that the fire had not claimed her for him. Forgetting the pain in her every limb, she rose to her own defense, turning to face him dead on. Her head thrashed forward. “YOU WILL NOT TAKE ME! came the angry scream made even harsher by her smoke scratched throat. ”YOU DESERVED WHAT YOU GOT!” As the always did when threatened, she spread her wings wide, making herself appear as big as she could. But the extension sent a sharp jolt through her raw tips.

No… no it’s not him came a voice in her head. With the pain had come a bit of clarity. The beast before her and Obharr’s build, yes, and even the voice that had spoken had been so similar, but the coloring was all-wrong. This creature, too, had a sharp horn instead of dark wings.

This was no ghost come for vengeance.

Her body seemed to shrink as all the fight left her. Stand your ground, girl! Megeara shook her head to rid it of that remembered voice, but she obeyed it anyway. She strained every muscle to make herself stand and survey this creature. That white. Spotted white her gaze flicked to the pit beyond and back, the series of events coming back to her. It had been this beast that she had seen, that moment of distraction that had thrown her to the flames. It hadn’t been his fault, not really. She thought of his words again. ”Why aren’t you dead

Why wasn’t she dead?! Her head pounded with the question and she could find not concrete answer. ”I had to fight.” it didn’t quite make sense to Meg, and even her words sounded a bit like a question, but that us what it had boiled down to. She hadn’t escaped, hadn’t killed her father, only to die here. The mare tried to remember why she’d been so eager to approach the edge. ”I needed to prove it. Needed to survive and go farther. I had to be better.” This stream of words was more to herself than the stallion in front of her as she tried to rationalize her actions.

Her gaze returned to meet the stallion’s. “I… Who…Who are you?”