A strong wind still whipped across the ocean as a stormy night slowly faded into dawn. Tattered clouds raced through the sky, still pregnant with hard and lukewarm rain and only reluctantly scattering to let through the faint light of the last pale stars. One by one they winked out of sight, but the shadowy dot that grew on the horizon no longer needed their guidance to navigate. Darkness lay behind her and ahead was only dawn as Shadow stubbornly, persistently worked her way towards land, little more than a grayish line far off in the distance yet so achingly familiar that the throbbing of her heart almost drowned out the burn of fatigue in the rest of the body. Each stroke of feathered wings made the joints feel as though they were about to snap, her breath came in desperate gulps and behind salt-caked lashes her eyes were tearing up - but she barely noticed, couldn't care less.

How long had it been since she laid eyes upon that blessed shore, on the lands that lay beyond? Seasons, years even, years of sickness and despair when every day threatened to be her last and all she could do was cling to life like a drowning to a single straw of grass. Large chunks of time was simply gone from her mind and memory, the rest a haze beheld through fevered eyes where reality and maddened hallucination blended together. How she had ended up there was more than she knew, but by the time the fog lifted from her mind and sanity returned the mare had been far from the land she had come to think of as home, lost and alone and horrified to discover that her son, the mistake of a progeny she had never cared much for other than for the sake of duty and guilt, was nowhere to be found. How shocked the shadowmare had been to discover that she missed him by her side, how frightened she had felt, thinking of all the things that could have happened to him without her there to come to his aid! She had searched for days and weeks, through seasons hot and cold - until a vague, faded memory surfaced and whispered to her of what had happened. Told her of the diseased monster that had attacked them both, her battle and defeat and the sharp order for the child to run, save himself...

It had taken her a long time to find her way back to the blessed lands of sun and moon, earth and time, and now that they were just within reach she was almost too weak to reach them. Under the thick black coat, matted from salt and brine and tousled from the persistent ruffling of wind and rain her body was little more than skin and bone, her last reserves spent on the effort of crossing the ocean. This storm... at its worst the aging mare had been about to give up, surrender and allow herself to plummet into the hungry darkness of the water below. Only stubbornness had kept her going, the same stubbornness that propelled her forward now. Flap by strained flap of wings, breath after ragged breath until her heart surely couldn't take a second more of the strain...

Then it all just faded away, consciousness slipping from her grasp. It was the crash into cold water that shocked her back to her senses, the sharp stabbing pain in the skin as she smacked through the surface of the sea. Liquid gushed in through all orifices and choked the air from her lungs, soaked through already wet mane and tail and drenched each feather through, making any further flight impossible even if she'd had the strength. Shadow coughed and wheezed and pedaled furiously with her legs to stay afloat, greedily sucking in air whenever her nose broke through the rough seas only to be dragged down below once more.

Flares of black and white light danced before her eyes. She forced herself upwards again, and again, and one more time, and just as she thought she wouldn't be able to reach the surface anymore something hard and firm connected with a hoof, and another. Land! Blessed, solid, firm land... Step by step the little pegasus hauled herself out of the sea, rising from the waves like a creature from the deep. When the first rays of sunlight spilled over the eastern horizon she collapsed into white, cool sands, exhausted and half-dead but laughing, a triumphant, desperate sound that faded away only when fatigue tugged her down towards the blissful oblivion of sleep.

"Home... I'm home, Kari. Just wait, I'll... find you..."



Shadow is back, guys! Open to anyone who want to meet her! :D