Your legs tangle as you hurry along between the threshold pines, swapping between the ambling gait passed down by your father’s fine lineage and the natural canter of your long-legged mother (and everyone else) which feels not quite as comfortable – you have never seen any other with a gait so unusual.
 
You lack speed, it is clear (if your friend is following it will take little effort for them to catch you up), and you are clumsy, still more than the typical foal might portray. But what you lack in haste you make up for easily in determination, in spirit. The ground vanishes beneath you mid-stride and your breath catches suddenly in your throat. You cry out as your startled golden gaze finds the ground rising again too quickly beneath – you are falling, but you brace pointlessly, ready. Your knobbly knees fold and collide heavily with the gravely gradient marking the border between regions and you roll helplessly onto your left wing and slide upon it down the remainder of the slope.
 
The kits’ne is thrown from your embrace unfortunately, and she yelps as she too hurtles down ahead of you. You are quick to consider her – Zero would be proud – even before assuring your own wellbeing, and with grazed, stinging knees pitched upwards you dig for traction. You find it and struggle to find balance back up on your hooves, and then quickly you scramble towards the helpless mass of fur, whimpering nearby. Gently you nose about her, examining curiously for any reason she might not be alright; she is weak, perhaps hungrier than you, and worry strikes your heart. You turn around, gazing this way and that, praying that your mother might happen conveniently upon you both and offer quickly her milk. Your stomach grumbles angrily at the thought and it starts to occur to you that you are not feeling so well either.
 
You lift your chin into the breeze and trill pathetically, “help, help…” You are hungry, cold (despite the aging day), and lonely. “Help, help, help…” you continue to chant aloud, turning to watch the shivering mass of fur on the ground, but still with your chin wafting high through the air. Confusion plagues your thoughts – you are too distracted to decide on what next you should do. A forest looms beyond your position, but whether or not it is the one you are seeking you cannot be sure. It is dark, uninviting and you stall by the perimeter. “Help, help, help, help, help, help…!”