I am Lace.

Many would tell me that I am strong. Personally, I would have to argue. I am only a man; I am flesh and bone, a mind and a beating heart. But that does not make one strong – what makes one strong is the ability to forgive themselves and others for what they have done, losing none of themselves in the process.

I am weak.

I can forgive these strangers, these faces of others that have come into my life and upturned every bit of it they could get their teeth on. But I cannot forgive myself for how I have failed; I cannot wash the blood from my own hooves.

And so I am here, this strange dream place that simply opened up before me, and now I am walking on the invisible path that somehow can support my weight over all this emptiness. It makes me a bit nervous, I’ll admit that much, and while I am not strong, I am brave. It will take more than a blank canvass world to scare me away.

I turn my face to catch the movement in the corner of my left eye, the white realm in which I am wandering having duped me into believing something was there at least three times now; they had only been what appeared as clouds and stars, drifting along through this imaginary space in a lazy half time. But this. This was perhaps a truly sobering sight, the first that had happened beyond the initial strangeness of this plane.

It is a pool of blood, and just behind it, stands Aera. Querita’s face hovers beneath the smooth and sickening surface of the basin that poor Aera has found herself standing over, and the smile that touches her lips burns down into my heart. She makes her first step towards me, and violently my head shakes in rebuttal and my mouth tries to send her away with a warning, but all that ushers from my lips is a vast amount of smoke, it’s plumes rising upwards towards the sky.

It seems the shade does not notice; still she approaches me, one hoof behind the other, and no matter how I try, my warnings are only palpable air swirling around my nostrils and maw, tongue waggling uselessly in my mouth.

The blood takes her, in the shape of the Lightning Queen. I knew it would. I’d seen this happen before, hadn’t I?

Only then, it had truly been my fault that the woman was drowned in Querida’s ambition, not simply that I had walked by and drawn her forwards into a pit of desolation. I tricked her into coming with me, and just like the first time, I turn my back to the bubbles slowly rising to the surface where the image of Aera had once walked towards me, smiling and full of trust.

I am not strong.

A strong man would have tried to save the mirage, so drawn by his own chivalrous desires that he would have at least attempted to pull the shimmering falsity from the dark water she had slipped into; a strong man would have attempted to rectify his past, surely, or would never have caused such harm to his soul in the first place.

Instead, we walk forward, Fajira and I, who has somehow appeared across my shoulders, white claws grasping my mane and following the steady bob of my lazy walk. Most days it would seem strange to me that she had just magically appeared, but in this place of purely magic, her presence was comforting. She had arrived at the proper time in my story, a white ghost to shy away all my insecurities and doubts about myself as I walk away from the damage that I have caused; the same time she had arrived before, truly.

We pass the pale shell from which she had been born, an odd blip on the right side of nothing. Her first meal is a bloody mess strewn around the shells, bits of gore and bone in stark contrast to the absence of any color around it. I wonder why it is that I have come to this place, if it is only to replay my scars and how deeply life and I have failed each other; why is it that it has chosen this image to symbolize the most important aspect of my life as I knew it now?

Fajira’s croon of comfort is ghostly and scant in this dream land, but it does the job it has always done; I fear less for what lies ahead. I cling to the weight and warmth of her body pressed against my spine and withers, a creature that depends only on I, and myself on her.

But is that truly so?

Perhaps the shell symbolizes that everything is empty unless you give it meaning.

Ahead of me, a green field lingers, perhaps fifteen yards by another twenty at first glances. Smoke is there, at least I think it’s her; she’s so young and unmarked by life that I have to blink several times and Fajira tightens her grip upon my locks uncertainly. Misery walks up from the back of the green expanse as we draw closer, a gathering of herbs clutched in her mouth and discarded before Smoke’s hooves, and they are both looking at me with such sadness and compassion that I find it hard to believe that I have not come back to this moment more often in my normal life.

Behind them and the field, a forest begins to grow. At first, it is small, little saplings breaking through the seemingly gossamer void that everything else had been born of. Fajira emits a low hiss, and for the first time since her arrival, I am sure that this is the real dragon upon my back, not a trick of the mind as the rest of this place seemed to be.

The trees grow into two forests, running undivided alongside one another. The first is the Mythic Woodlands, her trees old and haggard, littered with dark, heavy moss and bleak in its depths. My mouth slips open by a degree before I click it shut, focusing my gaze onto the World’s Edge to the right of the Woodlands.

It must be the Edge. The mists curl and dance between the trees, still old but not has beaten by the world as those in the Woodlands, and I can almost see the gleam of the nearest fire burning away in her heart. And there, along its borders, a pristine wall of glass, thick and domineering, it watches me with the intensity of a dragon’s knowing gaze.

They all do, really. The trees and the grass, the two mares of my past and present frowning at my arrival with such sincerity that I struggle to recall what Smoke looks like in the real world.

”Will you run?” she asks, and I am startled to hear a voice in this strangely quiet place.

Why? I want to ask, looking to her for the answer as my mouth silently gapes out the word. It’s beginning to piss me off, this inability to communicate with those in this place, but I will deal with it as I always do – I look to her for the answer, my ears pricked forwards in utmost interest and the slender white head of Fajira pressing against my neck. I can only assume she looks to the imaginary Smoke, as well.

”Or will you lead?” The grullo’s head tilts, and I watch distantly from a place within myself.

”Run, run, run,” sings Misery as she seemingly flies with unnatural speed into the folds of the Woodlands, and I start to follow until a shrill scream erupts from their depths; a thousand ravens burst from the tops of the trees, their mouths agape and the same horrid cry of “run!” slapping the air from every angle.

It does make me want to run. Every instinct I have says that this is dangerous, but it is the only option I have other than abiding the damn birds to walk forward. Smoke’s eyes nearly burn in their vibrancy as they peer over her shoulder at me; somehow, she has turned about and is walking towards the Edge. I trot to keep up with her, to protect her from the assault of the ink colored birds, but the grass has a mind of it’s own here, and has bound itself to my ankles, forcing me stop despite the strength of which I struggle against their binding.

The ravens begin to circle overhead the Woodlands, their calls black and foreboding as the sight and sound of their wings. That terrible scream of death still shudders the feathers against their bodies, makes prickles rise to my skin.

”You have always run. It has always been an option,” says the kindly healer, though suddenly she is much more savage and darkened in the features than I can remember her being. A flickering and almost magical aura has overcome her silhouette, even as she turns back towards the wood that I have come to call my home, she is black and elusive as a Haitian witch as her smile finds me again, sharp and badgering, ”where will you run now, Lace?”

Black rain falls from the birds overhead, suddenly, and seemingly, the ravens have become acid, dripping away in droplets to melt the image of the Woodlands into bleak and grimy ashes. Misery’s screaming has never stopped, not until the last of Smoke had slipped into the forest of the Edge, which remains untouched despite the close proximity of the black, oozing death that has murdered my former residence and all the nostalgia that the imagery had brought back to me.

And then, it was silent, silent as death after an unexpected illness.

Silent until Fajira was suddenly in my face, breathing flames that melted the flesh from my bones. I am screaming, and equally as horrifying as the burning, I am falling, or the grass knotted around my ankles is pulling me down; I don’t know which. In the pain, I have squeezed my eyes shut so viciously that I have no idea where I am when I finally feel a much too gentle thud against the flats of my hooves and my side.

I snap my eyes open to find myself alongside the fire where I had dozed off earlier that afternoon, the world quiet and ordinary around me, though I seem to have dropped the top of my nose down onto an ember while lying here so close to the warming flames. My heart is nearly leaping from my chest, so savage it’s pounding against the ribs that hold it captive, and while the dream still lingers heavily, there is also no one near by other than Fajira to see me wake so afraid and trembling.

That would explain the fire, I think, shaking the sleep roughly from my face and mind, trying to chase away the awful feeling that dream Smoke had left me with and the burning sensation on the bridge of my nose. Fajira comes from overhead, querying softly if I am alright, her white gleam comforting in ways but equally horrifying, the sensation of the fires melting my face so real, given deeper truth from my experiences with the Sun God of Helovia; it is hard to shake away the phantom pain that is arching across my face, neck, and chest, especially as a real ember has marked my muzzle as well.

I am not strong.

A strong man would not be so shaken after having such a dream.

Dim vales- and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again- again- again-