When the chance had come to escape, I almost missed it because I was so shocked. For the past year I had been traded and bartered for - a collection from my herd being sold as slaves. For labour, if we were lucky and for the most part I had been. This was the third time I had been bartered away, the faces around me changing but the manners always the same. I knew enough about herbs to make me useful as a healer. Sometimes that meant they kept me away from the other mares intended for slavery, the stallions that had been beaten into submission, and today was one of those days.

My guard had gone to help deal with one of the other captives that was causing a fuss and I was alone. For the first time in a year I was entirely alone and it made me catch my breath. Hesitating just for a moment before I kicked myself for wasting that moment.

I ran.

I half-stumbled a couple strides out but by then it was too late, I had to commit to the choice I made.

My legs were shaking and my heart was pounding so loudly I couldn't hear anything else as I fled into the forest. I couldn’t tell if they were shouting after me, shouting orders. I feared those with magic, the ones that could shoot arrows and lightning after me without having to chase me themselves. It was a small band this time, they couldn’t afford to send many after me out of risk that the other captives might escape as well, and that would be my saviour.

I took off into the forest, weaving through the trees and not caring where I went so long as I could get away. Branches whipped and scratched against my cream coloured sides as I weaved but for all the stinging I would not stop. It was hard to hope that I would find somewhere safe but so long as I evaded my pursuer - for I was sure that there was someone coming after me - I could at least be free. Given the circumstances, I wasn’t about to be picky.

I didn’t know when I passed from one land into another, the forest still looked the same to me and as much as my lungs were burning I couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop until I collapsed or was captured. Because, I realized in my flight, that I was so far away from everything that I knew that I simply wouldn’t know when it was safe to stop.

Fate, however, had other plans.

My breaths had become ragged and painful and I was coated in sweat. Even though I had been forced to slow my pace I still had no intentions of stopping. And that was when the precious piece of cloth I wore in my tail snagged on a branch of an evergreen tree. The snag jerked me backward, I surely would have lost it as well as most of my auburn tail hairs if I had still been running at breakneck speeds. Several of the long strands had already been pulled out, as it were, and along with the piece of cloth my tail was hopelessly tangled in the branches. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted at the trees, at everything, panic setting in as I tried to jerk my tail free but the cloth in it had looped itself resolutely over a branch and the more I moved forward, the more thoroughly I was getting it stuck on there. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. Now?” Wild golden eyes flashed around as I try to see if anyone is coming, if I’ve just snagged myself on a damn tree and gotten myself captured again. My body was trembling with fear, with exhaustion, but the knot would not loosen and I could not bring myself to break it. I was stuck.