The radiant sun glimmered, casting a rippling wave of searing heat down across any surface visible or creature thereon. Nyorm was sizzling through possibly its most intense season and naught but the cold blooded were content. A common land, cast off by the neighbouring Helovia, Nyorm was the home to outcast or defiant Pegasus horses who had adapted to a new sort of life- strewn across savagely jagged cliff faces and the salt-licked flats above them, constantly lashed by ocean gusts. She was born there, as fragile as fine glass, to an overprotective father and a visionary mother who would never fulfil her own dream, and so lived in constant reverie; spilling legends and fantasies of a world crafted by magic, yet long forgotten- Helovia.

The apple of her father’s eye, the filly with creamy star-filled eyes, was fiercely sheltered from all but the secret world founded in her colourful imagination by her mother’s bedtime tales. She was raised naive and gullible; ever trusting and lacking any realistic sense. The stallion was unaware of that planted and fertile seed though, which grew a little every night, greater and more fantastical every year, until one moonless night before the beginning of the child’s third year. The family herd settled into the cool darkness of that night, and the young grey mare slipped into the shadows and out of her father’s grip- silent, though fuelled by a romance of kingdoms and magic. She would never return to Nyorm.

It was to be two solid and utterly exhausting days of flight crossing wild, stroppy seas; rugged mountain pinnacles, and then on into the unknown- the future. She rode steadily, the cloud of ambition and determination, and it never withered; adrenaline surged through her veins and numbed the pain which coursed and throbbed through her beating wings. Africa fell from the skies at the first glimpse of habitable land (a thick pine forest, with a narrow clearing to swallow her up), and collapsed into a deep sleep where she landed... The mare was oblivious; Helovia had found and drawn her into its magical embrace.

~

Africa woke with a jolt, sweat beading across her brow line and streaking the dappled pools of grey across the fleshy curve to her flank. Certainly, her history seemed only that now- a wild delusion. She tucked her hind legs in beneath the barrel of her body, and forced her forelegs out beyond her supple breast, against which they had spent the night tucked safely. Taking a brief moment to glance about the shrubbery and wood she had taken shelter within, the young horse reflected on the previous day’s proceedings and what this new one would present.

Holding her breath, she heaved forward and lifted into the air, steadying herself for a moment. Already dawn had broken, and the night’s shadows had been chased away by the softly seeping sunlight. Africa had slept soundly, and as she gazed above and beyond the sheltering scrub, the sweet smell of water drowned the thick taste of dust across her tongue. Undoubtedly, the Throat would take some acclimatisation. Regardless, she savoured this new home and with nervous excitement building a meek smile across her thin black lips, the young horse ventured out into the open.

So far she could see no one, despite the cowardly, fanciful slither in her mind which hoped Midas might have been nearby. His voice resonated kindly and soothingly within her pulsating ears though- “A sanctuary that is open to those that wish to learn, to understand the meaning of family.” She was home now, and even as the butterflies began to swarm and flutter in her stomach, Africa trusted that there would be many here as kind-hearted as that black and white stallion (with the smouldering creature on his shoulder- who could forget that!) Slowly, the grey mare set out to find that attractive lake.