If the queen was smarter she would have noticed the way Bellona was distracted and distant while she blabbered on. She would have noticed the way that the peahen gasped for air, tried to inhale more oxygen than her lungs could carry and attempted to save herself from her past. Kahlua knew that feeling- escaping the chains that attached one to what had happened before. But Kahlua hardly had time to notice what the peahen was experiencing or pay attention to the way she jabbed at her companion across the way. The rainbow mare was excellent at hiding her emotions, and hidden they remained, as she pressed them away. “I don’t ask or expect anything in return,” was her pleasant, truthful answer.

But, as noted, happiness could not continue. She was about to accept the peahens reach when, looking down, a new nightmare for the queen began to materialize. The wind that had been growing, but otherwise ignored, should have been heeded. The ground was withering and exploding with worms in less than an instant. While Bellona stomped, Kahlua screamed, hooves slamming into the ground in an attempt to squish the nightmares that were pouring out beneath her hooves.

However, there was no stopping them; they came from nowhere and everywhere all at once and there was no stopping them. The queen’s eyes grew wide and her frenzied stomp turned to pure panic as the worms began to pinch and dig into her skin. Fear did not even begin to describe what she was feeling. Pure, unadultered horror was even too kind. Kahlua’s mind went all but black as the terror of the situation drove her to instinctual panic. But where to go? No matter where she turned there were worms everywhere and it seemed like her hooves hardly could remember how to do anything but stomp anyways.

But one last gust of wind was their savior, finally coming and blowing the monsters away. It had only been a few seconds, but Kahlua was covered in sweat and breathing like she had nearly been drowned to death. Tears that had been steadily growing in her eyes slowly began to pour over her eyelids. Even the words that Bellona spoke were barely heard, but Kahlua bobbed her head in slow disbelief, blue eyes staring at the ground in abject fear, as though the monsters would come back at the moment’s notice. “Yes, the herd,” she choked out through her tears and gasps.

When she finally began to move, spurred on by Bellona’s insistence that she attend to her family, the motions were sharp and jerky. But step by step she made her way away from this place; how could some place so beautiful be so terrible as well?

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