You are born on the last dying breath of winter as summer tears its throat out. Around you there are the stirrings of new life: green buds on trees, dripping shiny snow, and ants carving paths through old trees. There are the signs of rebirth all around you, shouting and screaming for attention—but you are deaf to those sounds. Instead you are consumed by the agony and torment of your wet flesh, the cold that curls into your fragile bones and sucks upon your marrow.

Ma, you think dully, blinking your eyes (both of which are too bright, too blue, against the pallor of your face.) She is the only real thing here: the rest of the world is smeary and fantastical, painfully bright compared to the darkness of the womb and abnormally loud compared to the soft stirrings of your mother's heartbeat. It is her white side you nestle against—taking the comfort of her warmth over nature's instincts. Stand up, stand up; you shake your head, thoughts rattling around your empty skull.

Feathers slide around you, soft as an angel's kiss. First you murmur, content, and then you choke. The air snags, unfriendly as teeth and hooves, in your throat, in your lungs—you rattle, you moan, and yet no air enters your chest. Instinct takes over: you cough, cough and cough, wracked by a heaving fit that deafens your ears to the thunder that is your approaching father.

Ma, you think again, eyes moist. You want to close your eyes (to sleep) to ignore the clamor around you, or at the very least disappear into your Ma's white.

There's no such luck for you.

You mewl beneath your mother's wing. The earth vibrates beneath you. For a scarce moment you are afraid, a primal, trembly sensation that works its way down from your fledgling wings to your toes; and then, head peering out from beneath Elsa's wing, you catch the first memory you'll have of your father. Ma might be your blanket, but it is clear your Da's your shield. He is ridged with muscle, striped and horned, a strange and alien king to your mother's simple silver; you shiver, recoil, but soon you'll realize he's only a horse as well.

(He's coming closer.)
He is elephantine; he takes up the whole sky. You look at him, eyes round and wide with both fear and wonder, and then he touches you, soft air curling down your mane. (You should be afraid. You are not.) Snot oozes down from your nostrils; you huffle and puffle, then sneeze happily.

You are home and you are safe. That is all you need.