I watch it all from afar - this myriad of chaos, confusion and loss. In the end they say that we won, but I wonder what our shiny prize is to be when all I see is the dark drying of blood. It's shiny when it's wet, beautiful and rich in color, but now?

Now it is dark and dull and flakes off bodies like old mud.

What does anyone truly ever win in battle but more loss? I have enough loss to share with everyone if they want it so much, we need not squabble over misery when it breeds fast enough.

I hang my head in solemn quiet, as if I have another option. Around me the ground is stained too, but it is with the black paint of an artist rather than the crimson ink of the body. I guess given a few days they'll look the same though. I am no artist of war though - red is not my color, only black, always black.

Releasing myself from the sanctuary of a tree with a shove I start to trudge closer to this place we have claimed. The World's Edge they say it's called. I am anxious to travel close to that edge and look into the end of the world. I am curious though, if this is the end, where is beginning? Is it the darkness of a mother's womb, and this, the cold scythe of a unicorn's horn in the mist the final place for all of us? No, I think, wrapping my tail against my haunches as the cold presses in, this is a presumptuous name. The world's edge is anywhere that we collapse, same as it is from every cunt we fall out of. This is no end, no edge, no final place. This is just a jut of land into the sky, same as all the rest.

Of course, I am selfishly assuming that the world's start is the womb of a horse, and that the world's end is the death of one. How utterly naive of me to think that any world, least of all the one we live in, revolves around us. I would have to be a greater stallion to think other wise though. I am young yet and can afford naivety, although the price is quickly growing too tall. Soon enough I'll be poor like everyone else, and then I'll either have to purchase stupidity or wisdom. The first tastes sweet the other bitter, it all depends on your tastes. In the end, they're both fodder for the mind and drive us to act all the same.

Perhaps I'll just starve.

As I disentangle my legs about the body of a fallen blue bird I glance at the happiness carved into his stiffening lips. His greatest artwork was his demise. His blood his ink, his chest his brush, this battlefield his canvas.

Rest happy my lost artist. I have more things yet to paint and they are not in blood. So fly on, fly fly on little dead bird.



Mirage calls to us, as they always do. She is as great a queen to follow as any, and I have followed a few in my short time. I think I have abandoned all hope for peace, no matter what words their tongues spill, it is all coated in spit and froth. I resign myself to an existence of frail morality and crushed dreams surrounded by disbelief and thoughtless expectations.

Once I followed hope - she spoke of peace but marched in war and fucked until her teats swelled around the lips of fresh babes.

Once I followed a sentinel - he spoke of protection but the darkness scoured away the light and burned the fortress of trees to dust.

Now I follow a dragon. At least I see the dark on her coat and the flames in her gut. At least I see the blood on her hooves and the tarnished crown on her head. She can not beguile me with broken promises because they already lay scattered in her wake. You will not wound me Mirage, I have little left to be scarred when those before you have wielded the knife.

I submit to the cage of a herd, least the wolves eat me outside of it and I forget my place in this spit of rock and think myself greater than I am and those around me greater than we are. I see now that we are the same as the animals that crawl in the woods, snarl in the seas and shit in the skies. We are dust motes caught in a beam of light and a line of shadow.

At least I will drift in an interesting beam, I think. I will not be swept under an idle leaf but will settle in the nose of a giant until he sneezes me out.

So I stand and I watch her and all her horses and I pledge myself just as freely and just as wholly.
I clutch to the shade of a tree and slowly melt into its darkness. I will serve her best in this manner. Silent, unseen, little remembered.

My body scatters into drops of ink. Before the whole of me splashes into the undergrowth I take flight as a dark murder of crows. Black and splotchy my beaks open to scream out silence as I wing my way above them. I circle them briefly like a foreboding watch before vanishing into the mists.

I will stain this land. Maybe then, only then, I can paint it into something better.

Like I said, I can afford some naivety still.