I AM IRON AND I FORGE MYSELF

Pain, the sort of pain that cannot be ignored, even in the depths of sleep and warmth and the siren’s call of dreamland, viciously yanks her awake. A deep-seated growl of frustration rumbles from her chest as Wessex protests through the quickly clearing fog - both to the intrusion and the source of the sharp, throbbing pain. A quick glance through half-lidded eyes shows that her scars are doing their glow-in-the-dark thing, and she groans, though this time, it is in pure annoyance. Every. Single. Time she seems them (lucky for her, they run along her ass, which means she doesn’t have to see them constantly), she is illogically annoyed.

Those goddamn scars are the only thing that keeps her from sneaking around in the night. It’s like whatever those reptilian monster things were that killed her kingdom and nearly got her also wanted to leave the then-filly with a lifelong reminder of that loss. Really, super nice of them, right? But the radiating pain calls her attention further back along her body, to her tailbone. Now, it’s been about a week, and in that time frame, her tail has almost completely fallen out. She looks like half a cancer patient (cancer isn’t funny - but a tailless horse is), and if she could only see…

Ugh. Nope. Big doesn’t necessarily mean flexible. Wessex hauls herself to her hooves and seeks the open air; the residual warmth from the springs and spruce branches are enough to keep the night chill away right now, but there isn’t much light beneath the overarching green boughs. By the light of the stars and a full moon, her large, horned figure stalks out into the center of the valley, and in full view of any who might wish to spy upon the newcomer, discovers something… disconcerting. A loud hiss of breath slides past her teeth as lizard eyes narrow and her heart begins to pound. A muffled shout of something, be it rage or confusion or fear, she does not know, cannot be restrained.

Where once she had a perfectly swishable tail, adept at flicking flies from her sides and hocks, or lashing against her body in contained anger, there now lies… an awkward stub. Right now, it looks like a stiff deer’s tail when at rest, lying flat against the curve of her rump, and down a couple of inches. Its end is rounded, though there is no hair or other sort of growth to be seen (yet).

“Not again,” she mutters through clenched jaws and grinding teeth. “Not fucking again.”

W E S S E X