She isn’t here... he sighed, breathless, and feeling the weight of fatigue set down across his little shoulders as the daylight dimmed around him. Kari was thirsty, and hungry; and generally unhappy. For a moment he paused, dark eyes scanning the timber around him, convinced that there’d been a murmur of voices; but even as flickering ears searched, there was no trace to follow. He shook, and a cloud of red sand-dust plumed around him. Promptly the breeze swept through and stole it, and the little disgruntled colt swivelled in vain across twisting, knobbly knees.

Lately, it seemed, Helovia had become more of a thief than a landscape. Monsters had stolen his mother, darkness had taken the light, oblivion had eaten his other mothers, vines had robbed him of his horn (the better half, he moaned), and... why can’t everything just be like it was. Ears pinned as he mourned the simplicity of his early life, and Kari started forward again, neck slouched between hunching shoulders, long bony tail dragging like a limp piece of rope along the leaf-littered forest floor.

Then, suddenly, he heard the low drone of voices again. Perhaps he knew the hopelessness of his endeavour, maybe this was all just to convince himself that all avenues had been exhausted- he wasn’t truly expecting company, was he? The little bleak coated colt stopped, neat cloven hoof suspended, breath bated. He might have looked like a spooked quail, certainly nothing fancier; definitely not anything sporting a full, magnificent crown...

Don’t you want to be found?

Kari bit his tongue, hard, NO!

His head cocked pensively, lips frowning, pouting. Dancing ears roved between the sudden outburst of roosting-bird banter to find the direction of the others. “I’m trying to listen!” the colt’s irrational voice shrieked, and instantly the wild, blissful chorus fell silent. It wasn’t that he was an angry child; Kari was generally a quiet, reserved boy who much preferred his own company. He found little comfort in words (especially those issued by any other), and feared always the visions and memories that fractured his mind erratically.

How are you going to get home? It’s dark now... Little hooves shuffled around, and he stared for some time back the way he (thought) he had come. There was no trail, print or grazed earth, to betray the course he’d taken. Warped shadows crept closer, intimidating, wicked, and Kari stumbled backwards in a bid to escape their crooked reaching fingers. They seemed to blend together, to form one enormous mass of hungry blackness- like the darkness that had turned his mother unrecognisable and utterly detestable. He had fled that strange, sickening night, and he turned now to run again.