Her face softened at the little one's confession. "We all have our reasons, I suppose," the mare said softly. This was not the first filly to leave her home behind, some for better reasons than others. It just seemed a shame for one so young. She was tempted to ask, but she remained tactful. "And our stories are only ours to tell." She silenced for a long while, an invitation to the young one to lay her troubles on wider shoulders for a while. Cheska did not presume everyone to be broken. Perhaps the filly really was fine. Time was a wonderful healer of such wounds.

And stories were a great distraction from them while they mended. In any case, the request was so earnest, Cheska couldn't think of turning it down. "Adventure, huh? I'm certain I know that word," she said softly, a smile setting her soft green eyes alight. "And I might have a story for it, too."

Adventure was a genre that the speckled mare rarely indulged in. It was too sumptuous, too rich for her unadorned method of storytelling. The stories she had carried nearest to her heart were tales of nature and the hearts of the brave. The tales she had woven herself were myths born from the world around her, a thread plucked from a peculiar whitewood, another from a unique animal, one or two a misremembered fable that she needed only plait details into to make anew. While her stories were a makeshift quilt, adventure tales were an intricate tapestry of characters and events. No story bubbled to the shallows of her memory immediately, but she dove into her archives and found the first filament reaching back.

Talla. The character blossomed in her mind, details rushing in like water into a hole in the sand. The spiraling horn, the massive wings, the gentle heart of Talla the Sun Bringer.

She knew the story that she would tell. "I have one… it's quite a yarn, though. Best make yourself comfortable." She inhaled, preparing to sand her tone into something steadier, the voice of a true storyteller.

"My name is Cheska, and this is the tale of how a mare named Talla saved the sun…. Well, the first time, anyway."

"There was a time, a long while ago, when the herds of a certain valley lost their faith. It was a gradual thing, prayers forgotten and stories warped over generations. Shrines were left to crumble into ruin and herds forgot their own patron gods. One herd alone remained devoted, tucked into the remote mountains. They were called the herd of the Sun Cliffs, and they paid their tributes to the Sun God faithfully. He repaid them with healthy foals and many plentiful years. He gifted them a great, warm cave in the mountainside to protect them from the punishment he would visit upon the unfaithful.

You see, though Sun God was wise, was also vain. He resented that there were no prayers, and so he decided to punish his apathetic flock. Frostfall came early that year, leaving the herds unprepared. The Sun Cliffs herd managed to retreat into its mountain cave and waited through a long, icy winter. As the days stretched into weeks and months, many below were lost to hunger or cold. But even when the first weeks of Birdsong did come, the sun did not return. The horses of the valley panicked, and soon came to the great cave for protection from the elements. The herd began to take in the outcast and weak who would not otherwise survive the storms. Food quickly grew scarce, and the lives of every creature in the valley hung in the balance.

The Sun Cliffs herd was led by a courageous unicorn stallion called Taja, and though his wind magic was powerful, he knew none of them could survive much longer without Sun God's intervention. He called upon his eldest daughter, the hybrid named Talla to seek out Sun God in his vast shrine and ask him to turn the winter to spring once more. There was none in the valley who loved Sun God more faithfully than Talla, and none more protective of the horses of the valley.

Talla chose the best of her herd mates to join her on her journey: first was her beloved companion, the brave fire dragon named Fyra. Next was her dearest friend Dryden the Excavator, the cleverest of all equines. Dryden and Talla had embarked on many an adventure in their youth, and many stories were already told of their quests. Finally, they were joined by the Amazonian pegasus mare Xandra, who would later be called the Time Keeper. She was a refugee whose mate had been lost to the cold, and she had a bone to pick with the Lord of Light, but she was undisputed in battle, and wiser than any warrior in the valley.

Taja led the party to the shrine and, using all of their powers, the opened the great door to the interior. Taja bid them good luck, and the door was closed once more.

Though the inside should have been dark, the walls glowed softly with the Sun God's power. The four followed a winding hallway to the first room of the shrine. It was massive, but the only exit was high above them on the far side. Talla and Xandra beat their mighty wings to try to reach the window, but neither could so much as rise an inch off the ground. Even the dragon Fyra could not rise more than a hover from her lady's rump. "The room is enchanted," said the Excavator. "There must be another way to proceed." The clever equine walked the perimeter until he stopped suddenly at a carving on one wall.

Dryden read them the riddle aloud:
"What has no eyes, no nose, but a face you can see?
Head high in the clouds and roots deeper than trees?
Its head can freeze and its heart may burn
If you wish to escape its name you must learn."

Xandra and Talla were stumped, and as they made their guesses, Dryden only shook his great head. "It isn't a clock and it isn't a rainbow. It could be a thundercloud, but I think… It's a mountain." Now, Dryden was given many gifts by the Earth God, but the Excavator could only dig, not build. It was he who had excavated the massive tunnels beneath their mountain to protect the Sun Cliffs from enemy attacks and give shelter to their refugees.

Xandra despaired that they could go no further, but Dryden was a crafty animal, and soon he was digging down an adjacent wall. No matter how deeply Dryden dug, the wall was deeper still. They would not be able to burrow out. Talla was quick to realize this, and to catch on to her friend's plan. She took the dirt as he removed it from the hole and began to pile it up into a mound, a ramp that would let them ascend into the next room. Fyra, too, lifted pebbles and rocks and rolled them into the pile. As their construction grew higher and higher, Dryden's digging became slower and slower. The last feet took hours.

Exhausted, the stallion sent his companions ahead while he rested.

The two mares and the little gold dragon climbed their little mountain and continued on into the next room. The floor was solid marble, but every wall was plated in shining gold, reflecting the room infinitum until they could see no exit. Weapons of every shape and size littered the room, resting against columns and piled in corners. Blood stained more than a few of the blades. It was clearly a battleground.

Across the room, the party could see two more mares, a tar black pegasus and a smoky hybrid, as well as a black dragon, staring at them seemingly without eyes.

Xandra stepped forward, and the other pegasus did the same. In an instant, they had clashed in the center of the room and arcs of electricity went crashing. Talla was quick to shield her beloved dragon from the chaos, tucking Fyra under her massive wing. From the fray above, feathers exploded downward. Talla hid her face, and when she looked back, all was still. The black hybrid and a dark dragon still stared at them, but there was no sign of Xandra or her opponent. Thinking her new friend lost, Talla reared back and then rushed at the opposing mare, who did just the same, reflecting Talla's movement stride for stride. Lowering her horn, she prepared for them to meet in the middle.

"Talla, stop!" Xandra's voice rang out in the chamber.

Talla obeyed, pulling up short of the enemy. The black mare stopped, too. Xandra stepped out from behind a near pillar, and the black pegasus stepped out across the room. "They are merely reflections." Xandra sidestepped until her own rump faced the next room. She slowly backed out, and Talla was quick to follow the same way. The black hybrid and pegasus grew further and further away, until they had receded into the shadows from whence the two mares had come.

"Did you defeat her?" Talla asked. Xandra only laughed. The pegasus was wise enough to know that sometimes victory was achieved by knowing when not to fight.

Their triumph was short-lived, for as they traveled down the next hallway, the heard a loud rumbling. They looked up to find the ceiling caving in on them, boulders crashing down from the darkness. Xandra was quick to push Talla out of the way. She used her time magic with a stomp of her foot, and the debris froze above her, leaving the passage clear for Talla to continue. She could not let the boulders fall for fear that Dryden would be trapped, nor could she hold them forever. "Go, Talla," she ordered. "Be quick about it!"

The hybrid galloped on to the next room, her hoofbeats echoing in the narrow hallways, the sound of her beloved dragon's wings in her ears.

She finally turned a corner and went rushing through a last door. Inside, the room was empty, dark and cold. There was no sign of the god she had expected to find within. Fyra comforted her companion with gentle coos, but Talla's faith was not so easily shaken. She dropped her head, closed her eyes and prayed to the god of her herd with all of her heart. She asked her god for the safe return of her friends, for the power to protect her herd. She thanked him for giving her Fyra. She hoped for his safe return.

Finally, the room was enveloped in the gold light of Sun God, and he appeared before her at last. Talla cried in relief for his safety and begged him once more to return to watch over her valley.

"I will do so," Sun God agreed mercifully, "But first you must prove that your peoples' faith in me is as strong as you say. Return to your herd, build a great fire. Then you must all return to me what has been given to you." Talla knew immediately what Sun God asked. Many seasons before, he had granted her the egg of a fierce little fire dragon... a dragon named Fyra.

By her next blink, Talla, Xandra, Dryden, and Fyra had all returned to their cave with the terrible news for the bonded among them. Some refused, denouncing the gods and leaving the cave to return to the cold with their companions. Others begged Talla to return, to try to find another way.

Those that remained helped to build a great pyre just outside the mouth of the cave. By nightfall, they had lit the fire. The companions went without question into the flames, one by one, and as they touched the first tongues of the fire, they disappeared in a flash of golden light.

The horses mourned all through the night, but at daybreak, the sun rose once again, warming them for the first time in months. The storms stilled, the snow began to melt, and grass grew green and plentiful through the valley. At midday, Sun God appeared to the brokenhearted citizens of the Sun Cliffs. He looked among their tear-stained faces and smiled, for the god had seen their hearts, and knew them to be pure and remorseful. "Your penance is completed," he announced to them. And as he opened his flaming wings, each companion appeared and returned to its bonded.

Fyra wrapped her wings around Talla and all celebrated the return of the sun together.

Sun God came to Talla's side to thank her and her friends for their sacrifice. "Your faith is great," he said to her. "From this day, all shall call you Talla the Sun Bringer, so that your story may never be forgotten."

And it never was."

count] 2157 \o/
tags] @[Spice] I'm sorry this took so long! This isn't the story I wrote for this thread, but it was a nice challenge.