Soren

It starts like this: with tiny hoof prints in the sand. The trail leads far and farther from his mother’s side, until some invisible wire shivers tremulously between Soren and the mare who means his life. Carefully, one wide blue eye peers over a narrow shoulder. He no longer spies Soleil in the distance, but he knows the way back.

Ahead, the ocean calls. The biggest thing he’s ever seen, it roars and crashes against the shore and its hooves are frothing white, its hide a heaving mass of deep, clear blue. Caution flutters in the careless waver of his pulse; at once he stands torn between rushing away and rushing forward. Behind him, the creaky voice of a bird splits the air. Soren rushes ahead; momentum builds in the flash of his toes. Too soon he skirts the white feet of the sea.

As he turns to play tag with the grasping waves, he spies a gathering of other horses in the distance. Their hides flash dark in the sunlight; he pauses to look down at himself, and see that his color matches, as he knew it would. He matches them better than he matches his mother, almost. The laughter leaves his gait and he stares, still far away, until his hooves move him closer.

The boy arrives late; his ears prick to the voices of other children, children so like himself. His eyes study the big stallion and the mare, though – and the bear. Soren hesitates well down the beach as he watches it. The filly at the bear’s side has golden wings; she seems unafraid. A unicorn with a stubby horn like his runs full-tilt into the stallion then, and the attention shifts a little. They look so lively; they pull him onward.

He isn’t sure what to say to them all, so when the time comes he says nothing. The pale sweep of his eyes moves over everyone, and he wonders silently if they are a family. Something about the group tickles a corner of his mind; some raw instinct draws the boy’s eyes toward the stallion towering above the others, black fur edged in white. Does he know this old man? Does he know the winged girl who looks so like the stallion? Soren only catches the tail of the girl’s words, and they mean nothing to him. He shakes his head, a ghost of char and ash just waiting to be noticed, suddenly afraid.

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