The child only knew light.

Darkness came, swift, savage, indifferent, but it didn’t last long – shifted over his eyes for a fraction of seconds before sliding away in a matter of moments – then everything was stark and vivid, pressing against his gaze, too bright. He shut them at first, wincing away the illustrious hues (the sky – blue, so blue, an entrancing sight but too bold now), shoving his eyelids back over the reddened factions of his stare, taking his first breath in one visceral shudder. His lungs inhaled, then pushed the air out again, and the boy made his first sounds – loud and crisp, a silly whinny that called for everything and anything all at once (mother was a basic instinct, crawling, rasping, grasping for the lengths of protection and guidance), and during his short tenure of a closed glare, he reached out into the void, poking his tiny muzzle into the abyss, searching, searching, searching for something, anything.

His first touch was into sand and stone, a gritty surface finessing his small, finite whiskers, and he sneezed immediately – opening his eyes again to the beckoning reaches of the rolling waves (a wondrous sound, like crashing, like folding, like power), overwhelmed by the incandescence of the earth around him. He was connected to the riches, to the treasure, to the measures of its persistence, it echoed and thronged and filled him to the core – he swallowed, opened his mouth to nicker again, to reel back into motion. Wet and new, fresh and foreign, the dunes clung to him as if he belonged to them, one of theirs (he was, he was), even as he attempted movement and wildness, unfurling one of his forelegs to rest it just so, pressing into the altering granules.

Then, before him, all beauty, warmth, poise, and magnificence, was mother. It had to be her, because she’d given him life, because she’d carried him, curled and nestled, provided for him when he was helpless and nothing – and the third noise echoed from his essence with such a sensation of delight and fixation, tiny body maneuvering towards her distinct, gilded form – crawling, smiling, a manifestation of wonder and dominion. His little maw sought her attention, brushing over one of her massive hooves, jubilant, lithe frame quivering from a blow of cold wind, and caring for naught but incessant necessities of hunger and delight. He knew nothing else – not the darkness eating away at the world, not the monsters threatening to consume them, not the war brewing between mortals and fiends; a blessing, to be so immune and ignorant, to be so new and unaware of the treacheries lacquered outside their ocean sanctuary. The world might’ve bellowed beyond them, but he would’ve never acknowledged the heavy bouts of horror clinging to the outer rims – a radiant beast born to mountains and metal.

Mauna

Crowns have their compass-length of days their date-
Triumphs their tomb-felicity, her fate-
Of nought but earth can earth make us partaker,
But knowledge makes a king most like his Maker.