Life is a perpetual dream.

It twists and turns as quick and sudden as an unexpected nightmare. Memories flutter off into the distance while the present becomes uncertain, surreal. The young stallion is truly lost here, in a world quite unlike the one he escaped from. He finds himself in the strangest situation, between crying out in joy or falling silent underneath the unfathomable possibilities that exist ahead. The thought that he is indeed entitled to something, his very own soul, sends his mind into shock and his fears into a scramble; so much so that they have reshaped and transformed into new evils.

And yet he finds himself here, on a battlefield. The smell of blood is tangible with the wicked air, restless and wild with the ironic scent of spring hanging on every swift move. It is still cold out, but not too cold now that the season has changed. It bites and crawls about his skin, it enters through his nostrils and burns his lungs briefly. A feeling, when compared to the frigid teeth that had sunk its poison and frozen his body, helps him focus and revel in its presence.

The sun remains high in the sky. Its coarse rays hit the ground, just barely, toasting the flesh wherever it reaches. Like fingers it draws down into the earth, stretching out and hitting the frosted grass. Small beads of water glisten across the field; the chilled ground is moist and nearly soft. The young colt continues to wander across the wide scene, with only the divide of earth and sky to accompany him. It is peaceful here, regardless of the fights that exist in these lands. It’s the perfect sort of peace, the sort that burrows itself inside your chest; for a moment or two there’s nothing to feel, worry, fear, it doesn’t exist. There is only calm that spreads out into this kind of quiet, a knowing that permeates from that peace. It’s perfect because it lasts for only a few seconds at a time, it’s rare, and it is precious, because the feeling is crushed by what the future tends to. The mountain of tasks that lend weight to the shadow it draws upon.

“I must wait,” he finally says. Words that will never be familiar to him, words that will always appear faked; when life has always been a game of life or death, lies have always provided refuge for the boy. He can no longer recall a time when the truth has saved him; those memories have long passed with the snow.

What attracts the former dancer? The boy has never fought in his life, ruthlessly once; but that was in the beginning. Even in this chapter, in this beginning he had fought, and with that fight he paid by the loss of his tiny crown. That beginning is a memory locked away in hues of red, shades of black. It thrives in its vault in his mind; its echoes alive; he can’t get them out.

They are why he’s stopped now. Why he waits alone on the horizon, certain that another will seek out the risks there are to a spar, a fight. He can still feel the chill that vibrates down into his head, the moment when he raised his head and speared his horn into the socket of a living creature. The gush of blood is a thought that fills him with disgust, enough so that he can’t stand himself. Dawn finds no justification in such an act, and wonders why that memory, of all his ill memories fails to bleed out with time.

He measures in a single breath in, another out. Standing still, his sooty body thirsts for some sort of stimulation. The pain in his head is something that reality can’t seem to help, can’t seem to fix.


[Hey! So if you want we could have intros and get right into sparing? The layout: wide field, frosty grass and slightly wet ground, it's in the process of thawing out. Clear blue skies with sun, very windy. Anything goes. I wasn't sure how many posts you want? I'm good between 5-7. Judged?]

DAWN
stallion of world's edge