They pace along the ashen shore, hooves slipping in the uncertain terrain, legs leaden in the clutches of the slurping, greedy sand. Large half-moons and dappled little paws, their footprints reflect what they have become: her, tall and lithe and bulky and big, he short and dainty and three-tailed and small. He splashes in the puddles left behind by her steps, a shadow nearly invisible in the wake of her fiery glow; he disappears in the light that comes out from her mane, edges around the rim of her nightlight, the only thing holding her sanity in place.

For she is terrified, the girl, afraid of the dark and the whispering sea, the abyss of nothing that threatens to swallow her whole. She forces herself to hide it, to step in the sand and stare straight ahead; but her gaze is a lie, her stillness a mockery, and she trembles beneath the scarlet skin, mind reeling with horror at the threat of the night.

She has seen the monsters who lurk beneath the moonless sky.

She has felt their teeth, healed their wounds. Smelled their blood.

She wills herself not to shudder.

At her feet her brother whimpers, and flames shoot eager from the tails of three. It's okay, he tells her. It's over now. He smiles, his sharp teeth yellow in the fire; he has to do it, has to be strong for her. She does not look down at him, does not dare remove her eyes from the point of nothing upon which they are fixed, but her ears halt their frenzied twisting for a moment, left one tilting down to where he stands, her guardian against the surf, and for a flicker of a moment her lips soften into a strained smile. She thinks something to him, and he thinks it back: I wish Mother was here.

So do I. She loved- loves the night.

I hate it.

Her mind fills with venom, and the boy retreats from it, and for a moment they are lost within their own worlds, unaware of the dangers that surround them, of the looming spectre which has entered only the outline of their sphere of awareness. They are trapped within themselves, for they are young and self-absorbed despite their years of trials, unequipped to handle the world they have no hope of escaping.

[ ooc | hope this is okay! Feel free to kick me out, srlsy <3 ]