They were adrift.

Among the sands, beyond the sea, brushing up against each other like debris tangled together. This had been his existence thus far, altered only by the occasional swell that rose within her, like a tempest that came with a fierce, but brief force. Her outbursts seemed to drain her further, and she dragged all the heavier afterwards.

As he aged by the day he became increasingly perceptive. This was not normal. At first it seemed likely, because what else had he known - how do you even define normal anyway, much less at the start? Arguably this was his normal, which is why he felt content, but he knew it wasn't the normal. Other foals around him seemed more prone to frolic, and why not, their mother, nay, their parents, encouraged it with their own vigor. Iskra however, clutched tightly to the morose shadow that was his dam, a darkness that not even his ever-present sparks and all the light they emitted could drive away.

Certainly there were times when his youth overwhelmed him and he sprinted off, bucking, squealing, rolling this body part and that one just because he could (or as the sand sometimes reminded him when he planted into it, could not). When he did she rarely responded - just occasionally flicking her dull gaze to him, rarely a lift of her head, and but once a hoarse whisper of his name along the breeze. He might have run off into death by now if not for his innate empathy; a beating heart he was born with like all the rest, but one that seemed to beat for others as much as for himself.

He was sad for her. Knowing her like this, understanding more and more that something was wrong, his heart went out to her all the more, and so he lingered and behaved as best he could. It wasn't too hard. Moms are nice after all. They're warm, and safe, and they're food. Sensibility alone drove him to stay next to her, but empathy kept him.

As she stopped he bumped against the back of her legs, marked face poking through the fronds of her tail to peer beneath her belly at the blue beast rolling before them. The ocean was nothing new, but this one was different, he noticed it at once. Curious, Iskra stepped forward, his strides slow and cautious, his knees jerking up high as he pranced among the moving lip of the sea. His bottle brush tail wagged energetically against his rump, and his wings fanned out for balance on either side of him, fire and lightning bits unfurling from beneath and rolling up and around his primaries, seemingly chasing each other before falling off the edge of his feathers and winking out of existence.