Despite the difficulty the strange calf provided, brother calf had succeeded in teaching Esinakh to fly. Well, not fly, but controlled gliding—for now. Slowly, with extreme caution that only the grullo filly could master, she had begun to further her gliding-radius. Flapping became and art form of symmetry; a regular rhythm with equal spaces between beats, set in harmony with her heart and breaths. In the beginning, she had nearly fallen from the skies because she had begun to hold her breath when it came out of rhythm with her wingbeats. Now, however, she had the hang of it… mostly.

So, with the turn of the season, she managed to venture even further from the Edge, flapping all the way to the middle of the Thistle Meadow. In fact, the half-year-old filly hadn’t even realized how far her flight had taken her, so focused was she on the evenness of her breathing, flapping, and heart beats. It was distracting, maintaining a synchronous, symmetric beat.

But, when she glanced down from her flight (to be truthful, she was not more than ten horse lengths above the ground) she realized that she was far from the Edge’s glass-spiked borders. The snow here was pristine, not marred by the hoof prints of the many herd members.

Pale eyes widen, lips parting in a slight gasp. Abruptly she dropped a few feet as her wingbeats faltered—but now it was all out of synch! She bleated once in the air in consternation, rapidly flailing her wings and holding her breath to try to get everything back in rhythm.

But she failed, instead landing in a heap of grey feathers and too-long legs. She tried to surge to her small, dark hooves long before she was ready—an instinctual move to get herself away from any dirt that might coat her skin when she fell. Instead, she succeeded only in somersaulting and ended up spread-eagle in the snow.

Luckily, this snow was newly fallen, soft, and pristine. So it not only broke her fall, but also did not coat her with filth (a much worse fate). But, still, she struggled, slightly dazed from her plunge, to a sitting position. Her right wing (the bane of her existence as those white feathers were so hard to keep clean) hurt slightly, and her feathers were all askew.

She bleated in concern, abruptly going about smoothing her feathers with her white-snip nose.