The air was thin and cool, though Africa found small comfort in the warm glow of sunlight which peered curiously between streamy tufts of snow white clouds. Gentle cream eyes watched the stranger cautiously, curiously. She blew a breath quietly through pursed lips; the one she had been holding apprehensively as though it might help conceal her arrival from the stallion with a small tree growing from the centre of his snowy-white forehead. Tilting her face slightly she investigated him a little closer, shuffling forward with intermittently vigilant steps. She was determined not to suffer the same fate as with her last visit to this (ironically) god-forsaken place.

She had been spotted- his face lifted and turned towards where she dithered, locked in the folly of hesitation. She had crawled close enough by then to witness the narrowing of his gaze, and was certain that malice and lust for the shed of her blood was oozing from their gape. Of course he sought her demise; it was the same she firmly believed for all those with horns. It wasn’t racism though, it was reality based from a very shallow pool of experiences.

The wistful glance sideways and even the slightest variation of her attention, failed to foresee the stallion’s next move. Obviously she predicted a fleet-footed attack lunging at her vulnerable jugular, the blurring black and white aggressor of the past holding stark precedence in her sickened mind. It was not to be though apparently, and with a startled jerk of her disbelieving face Africa witnessed him throw himself down before her- at her feet no less. She craned her skull sideways; long neck arched away from the sprawled mass of white body, and looked down at him with astonishment through one, wary eye.

“Mistress of the flowers, have mercy!” He seemed to beg, and a bewildered quirk twitched the corner of her slightly ajar mouth; her expression was bemused, her already simple mind breaching meltdown capacity. Still, she smiled awkwardly down at him with meek disquiet. "I only wanted to pick a few; so that I might carry their beauty with me....I didn't mean to hurt anyone!" His voice seemed to reflect the conflict churning through her mind; it began to waver pitifully and an immense surge of concern choked as an emotional bubble in her throat. He scrabbled closer through the thin, yellowy-green grass, crushing it as he did so.

There was a surreal strangeness pooling in his milky eyes that she couldn’t place- she had never encountered blindness before and was both troubled by the mysteriousness of his stare, and intrigued. He looked away from her suddenly, relinquishing his possession of her own starry-eyed gaze- that which had been tempted down, slightly closer to look over him and assess his credibility. To her, the embodiment of immaturity and foolishness, he seemed to be retarded; or stunted psychologically in some form or another. Are you real? Are you my conscience? She pondered between dumb-struck blinks...
While he appeared otherwise distracted by a pretty field-daisy of some kind, Africa lowered her quivering muzzle to prod him once, twice- and his supple flesh was quite warm and alive. The situation was bordering insanity, and slowly she began to question herself, wondering with a screwed up nose if this was the beginning of her minds decay. She had always considered herself different, imaginative and the like... but this was even more peculiar than the wildest of all the adventures she had dreamt up.

"It's beautiful" Came his whispering voice, cracking through the flood of her thoughts, and quietly she lowered her face to examine the flower- something she did quite often in fact, and drew a long breath filled with the soft hue of pollen spores. It is pretty...” She agreed with a soft, considerate tone and glanced over the stallion as he still lay beneath the peaceful sway of the tall wildflower carpet. Trustingly, she began to lower beside him, falling the final distance across folded black legs with a thud. Propping herself against her elbow for stability, Africa reached across and picked the flower, breaking the stalk from its bed and threading it silently, to secure it through a thick tangle of white mane behind his large, sagging ears... “Why don’t you keep it then.” Africa thought him to be unnervingly unbalanced, and so affirmed inwardly, that if something made him so dizzily happy, why not attach it to him permanently.

She leaned back, quite satisfied with her attempt to make peace between them. ”Now you may carry such beauty always...”