Look down, the ground below is crumbling
Look up, the stars are all exploding
Much of the young dapple grey mare’s outlook might have seemed all too familiar, cliché even- light of heart and ever the optimist; so delicate, young and weightless, but creases were now etched into the pale, taut canvas of her smiling face. The murky dimpled skin around her gentle eyes was wrinkled with buried tension; the same sorrow and suffering which reflected so deep within the hollow of her misleading, shimmery amber pools. When last she had spoken with her adored General, Africa had been naive in her venture- a child in many ways; a fool. Then, they had braved the drenching of a grizzly storm together beneath a tree whose significance she had been blissfully unaware of; both had been oblivious that that moment of company might nearly have been her last. She remembered that meeting well- it was the brightest of the limited memories which remained before her capture.

Africa’s eyes flickered freely in the direction of Fina, whose chirp seemed uncannily like that of her best friend, her soul mate. A murmur rumbled in her throat for a second as she regarded the Pheonix warmly, despite the prickly reception between them on the few brief occasion’s before. Quietly, she glanced back to Midas as the sound of his voice drew her listening ears in closer, and the smile lowered into a rather more solemn expression. She nodded in response to his words as their hot breath mixed convivially, a frank new perspective on life causing her brow to quirk for only a second as she wondered about the wellbeing of their family. For a moment, guilt flinched through her slim, undefined shoulders and upwards to tweak the point of her sharp withers, but she quelled the feeling swiftly and silently.

Again the General spoke, addressing her sensitively though there was little need. Africa was no longer the jittery flower which once swayed between conflicting desires, shying from the slightest sideward looks like an impressionable, untouched lamb. Her posture was tall and not at all hunched over with witlessness. She wore comfortably an aura of fresh confidence, interwoven with untold secrets and understandings- lessons that were both unfair and grim, etched into her winter-thick c.oat in the form of old blemishes and permanent scars. Perhaps she might have seemed older, now, to the particularly vigilant eye.
Africa watched Midas tenderly, a new sort of smile finding residence across her parched, grey lips. It was sincere and kind. “Of course,” She replied with an innocent shrug, though her words were softer than when she initially greeted him. “It’s been such a long time… I forgot how far away home is.” For only a second she closed her eyes to think. For the life of her, she could not remember this walk being so vast.

Silas slipped down hastily from his mid-air scouting as the two horses came into his view. Through narrowed eyes he surveyed the unfamiliar stallion, overlooking Fina completely in his juvenile haste and alighted with cautious reserve upon his soul mate’s knobbly spine as she stepped forward to continue along the final leg of her arduous their journey. “Midas... Fina,” She said as the midnight Zephyr’s blunted talons gently gripped the loose skin across her back, “This is Silas.” Despite all that she had sought and discovered about ‘companions’ and ‘bonds’ previously, Africa never considered her friend to be such- they just were.