The heat was oppressive. Like a thick, wet woolen blanket warmed by relentless sunshine, the air was standing perfectly still. Not a gust, not a breath of wind could be felt, every lush green canopy and leafy shrub were quiet and still. Even though the summer was only just beginning the greens of the billowing hills had a faded, weary feeling too them, dusty and matted and bowing beneath the merciless glare of the Sun. The shade provided by tall evergreens was only marginally better than the open meadows, because like everything else with a smidgen of sense the insects had taken to hovering over stagnating pools of old melt water. They were a torment with their incessant buzzing, biting and stinging, driving more than one horse to the brink of insanity as they tried to go about their day.

Yet one mare, small and dark and decidedly scruffy looking, seemed oblivious to the swarms of biters that hung like a cloud of misery around her. Padding slowly along her focus was on the ground, on the lush green grasses that grew thick and tall wherever rays of light managed to break through the canopy, and on the ravenous hunger that ached like a fever to the very core of her bones. The rhythm of her gluttony was trancelike; a half step of a hoof, inky lips baring down around a tuft of grass so that blunt ivories could tear it off with a jerk of the head - often so roughly that the very roots came along - and even while she chewed the next step was taken, and then another.

The reason for her hunger was quite plain, of course. Where most horses were fat and plump after a season of rebuilding their bodies after the winter, Shadow looked positively starved. Not quite skin and bone, her hips and ribs were still showing clearly and the way old winter-coat still clung to her harried frame suggested that she had been less than well fed for quite some time. Even more ragged and unkempt than usual, the coarse hair of mane and tail had grown out excessively, until she looked little more than a walking fur-ball.

Oh, but she couldn't care less. She had made it! She was home, back in Helovia where the air tingled with magic and familiar faces were aplenty, and before long she would be out there under the blazing sun doing what she had come back here to do. Just... first she needed to make sure she wouldn't die. It had been a close call on the beach, the mere memory of it made her shudder - so the little pegasus pushed the thought aside, employing her usual prowess at avoiding unpleasant thoughts.

What mattered now was food. Grass and berry, flower and leaf and root, nothing escaped her ravenous appetite, and so absorbed was she in her feeding frenzy that she became completely oblivious to the surroundings. Not very healthy in any place. Not very smart at all, in a place like Helovia... But Shadow had forgotten that. Two years of constant illness tends to do funny things with your memory...


@[Maren]