I forgot what they looked like,
But I can’t escape what they left behind; a tsunami of red. The few who have made it thus…
I miss their faces, their voices singing hymns; true and powerful against the juxtaposition of death and ruin.
I can’t even utter a verse, lest I fall silent for a century or more.
They have all gone; they have joined the wind in ethereal communion.

Each day is shorter, and the clouds, rife with anger and petulant frustration stir non-stop. Eventually the sun has all together dissapeared, leaving no trace of a warmth for even the wandering stranger on his beck and call to seek his mysterious ends. It will not end; the yearling is certain. It remains imperative to keep moving, and to resist the numb injection of cool winter wind. It’s unbearable here, where sleeping becomes a lucrative and perilous act; shall I be gifted the chance to find renewal on this cursed day? Or shall I drift along with my brothers, my sisters, another voice to hail the winter-song?

It is with patience that the youth continues to push beyond the snowy steppes and endless frigid prairies. The dark wave of a tsunami red has long since crashed and made its terrible, yawning teeth a presence of danger and demise. One can never be too certain though, whether the sweeping waves will recoil far enough to smother a premature peace. As much peace a grieving heart can squander.

Peace did not exist in loneliness however, as the winter cautioned the living from stepping out. Who would want to? The desperate perhaps, the lost and forgotten (to be made silent); or perhaps to escape and taste the ravenous fang of death prowling on the open plain. But out of some ill motive the girl could not help herself; life, she had her life, and that was all she had. Perhaps more than she thought she did; those voices who called up to the sky in hymns were invariably attached to her journey. The youth could not see past their deaths however, could not properly conceive a life beyond their warmth. And with merely a life to carry on, a life to keep a flame, she struggled to wonder why it even mattered.

Nonetheless the red stained roan marched towards the valley ahead. With eyes shadowed against the pregnant belly of snow-clouds, she pushed through; steady, quiet with the wind in howl.

There were foreign scents here… crawling past her nostrils, making her wary.

Was this the end?

She continued to weave through forest, sticking close to each tree, hugging it as much as she could as the snow fallen ground scattered here and piled over there. At least the wind was angry, and it made the sounds that she made very hard to trace. The scents were odd as well though, and yes, indeed… they were hard to trace as well. Because nature would not allow one creature to tame its wild head; it certainly ran rampant during one of the most treacherous times of the year.

But instead of being lured by the whistling wail of that old winter spirit, the young, agitated filly stopped just before the forest broke away into a clearing.

Where her eyes wandered into the white of it all; longing for a single sign. A voice that would tell her it was going to be all right… baby-girl; it’s only a sunrise away. But as she lifted her cool gaze up into the shadow of cloud, she found no certainty in its vehemence. No good will would take her up and cradle her, as she should. And it was this asinine, archaic primal need to survive that she would have to settle for. That drove her, for some undetermined reason, to keep pressing on.