This is what she gets for being nostalgic, she thinks to herself in a daze as she awakens.

The trip from the Basin to the Deep Forest was a long one. A several day trip that she had taken, following the ghosts of family long passed and memories once faded. They had refreshed with the terrain, as she had wished and as they always did when she walked the familiar labyrinth of the fir trees. Alice had trotted peacefully beside her, reveling in memories she had not been alive to witness, finally starting to understand the flawed beginnings Hotaru had risen from. It had been a quiet endeavor, secretive. She had drifted beneath the sunlit boughs, trying to remember what it was to taste and smell and feel everything she once had as a child. Tried not to fool herself with illusions of golden feathers, or a trailing bird overhead, or a mocking tinkling laugh. Her mother was long gone, her body immortalized into a beautiful tree alongside her father. 

Only, the peace of the venture had been cut brutally short. 

The smoke was what awoke her. It was like spice and death in her nose, and something old and instinctive screamed out in response inside her, eyes flying open just as Alice was barking madly and shoving into her forelegs. Hotaru went with it immediately, eyes wide with horror and fear as she whirled round and round in the dirt, heels kicking up deadened leaves and dust. She knew of fire, knew of its power, but she had never seen it so wild. Never even been close enough to know more about it than the color. She was Lady of ice and cold, and she was frozen with terror as she heard the trees screaming against the onslaught, head dizzy with all the sounds and sensations. Alice was biting her now, their bond breaking open like a snapping branch, the hellspawn bitch throwing herself down the line until Hotaru's eyes were rolling white beneath the surge. RUN, RUN, RUN!

It squalled into her head and she whirled, dizzy with her own efforts, the world tilting and sliding in her terror, naught but a child once more as she tried to find the area with the least amount of flames and went streaking off in that direction. Alice was a step ahead of her, a white blur in the smudged landscape of charred black and raging orange. Hotaru wheezed and coughed beneath the smoke, eyes watering and heart beating so fast she was sure she was going to fall to her knees and die right there before the fire ever had a chance to lash her hide. 

A roar and a squealing snap nearly deafened her, and a flaming tree toppled over as if in slow motion, right before her. Hotaru cried out and slammed her hooves to the earth, scarring it with her abrupt stop as she tried to stop and turn simultaneously. A flaming branch on the tree whipped across her right flank and she screamed louder than she could ever remember, throat torn with smoke and terror as tears streamed down her eyes and she flung herself away from it. Alice was barking from the other side, racing up and down the length of it, her fear mounting with Hotaru's and amplifying until the rosen girl could feel nothing but the dark tunnel of agony around her. 

Alice heard and noticed him first, a large stallion pacing the edge of the flames, calling into them. She went flying towards him, barking, smoke rolling off her like some sick parallel of the smoke driving every animal out of the depths of the forest. Raced around and through his legs, meanwhile yanking on her bond with Hotaru, trying to get her to focus, focus on this could-be savior past the flames. 

Hotaru grasped onto his voice like a lifeline, dancing in the shrinking ring of safety, too scared to jump over the flames and the fallen trees, hips and legs stuttering and jolting as she tried to summon the courage to try. "HELP ME!" she screamed back, pride and grace thrown out the window in the face of her terror. She had never even seen fire before. All she wanted was to get out alive, retreat back to her castle of ice and snow, and chase away the tremors that would likely linger in her bones. 

I'm not a girl, I'm storm with skin