Look down, the ground below is crumbling
Look up, the stars are all exploding
The colt turned towards her indiscreet prompt.

The one-winged mare shifted, spreading her weight evenly across each of her long, lean legs once again. Her bonded swayed skilfully while she moved below the delicate grasp of his powerful talons, holding his balance with the aid of slightly ajar wings, and his hawk-like violet gaze remained tuned to the stranger loitering up ahead. A preoccupied sigh filled the cool air about her face with a mushrooming cloud of hot breath, and she nodded her reeling head indecisively; unable to muster the courage the young colt seemed so desperate for her to find. Africa was torn between the bitter terrors of her past, and aching fear and mistrust, both paving the path into a bleak future. While she dithered, her dirty mottled coat flinched and prickled, taught across her slender frame.

His low call slipped through the corridor of trees once again, flooding her listening ears, challenging her to shed the cloak of suppression and concealment beneath which she found meek solace. Bothered, she flicked her tail harshly, the long wiry skirt lashing at her bony, pointed hocks. Before them, the stranger’s dim outline seemed to grow; appeared to extend upwards, and Africa’s eyes danced suddenly forward to assess that which she had been essentially and consciously ignoring.

Silas answered the colt’s silent bid for attention with a strident, solitary chirp- though aloof; he could see the stranger’s innocent plea, and to some small degree, pitied the futileness of his appeal. The mare watched with silent regard, unwilling to meet the colt’s advance.

At last he called again, and both bird and Pegasus could sense the pang of frustrated confusion lacing the note of his juvenile voice. "I'm going to go to you, but the one rule is that you can't move, 'kay?" Through another drawn out sigh, the young mare obliged, lowering the bulge of her brow to rub against the hard white ridge of leg, falling below her knee. She could hear the careless clatter of his untrained step, as he swept forward across rime and dying grass, and also the bright pitch of his bugling statement. Silas felt her squirm; knew her discomfort as it spread like disease between them.

He came upon her quickly, enthusiastically she thought through silent resentment, remembering the days not so long ago when she bumbled around in much the same way, blissful and obnoxious; starry-eyed and playing with any who fell across her recklessly ambitious path. She made little attempt to mask the strain of sorrow as it pooled through her expression- it was blindingly dark, and Africa had not the energy or willpower to fight away her demons.

"Where is your mother..." Came the unavoidably dry, detached reaction. Her throat was dry, her voice raspy having not quite recovered from the fraught desperation of her cursed time in the Basin. Perhaps she sounded to the colt like a haggard, stubborn old mule whose life had been drawn out beyond its worth. She cared little however, and peered at him through the narrowed slit of one honey eye, her heavy skull craned awkwardly to one side. Unfortunately, Africa was unable to breach the fog of pessimism choking all that remained of the character she once was.