Okay, so he had to hand it to that Slaiter fellow – he knew a good meadow. He hadn’t been to sure about this ‘Helovia’ place when he had first arrived in that forest. Yeah, okay, he liked a good forest. But that one was just so prickly and there was nothing comfortable about it. Wilibald liked open forests, filled with clover and lavender where he could waste away an entire day lying down and eating and eating while he was lying down. It was a little early in the year to figure out whether there were any places like that here, but in the meantime there was plenty of snow.

And snow was wonderful for napping.

In fact, that was precisely what Wilibald had been doing for the past few hours – recovering from the trip here and wondering if he had been gone from home for long enough. Maybe not. It really had only been a couple days, which was the longest anyone had ever been away from the herd since his great-uncle Ferdinand had gotten lost one winter and showed up the next summer twice the size and strangely enough completely black from head to hoof when he had been brown before. He also demanded that they call him Padfoot from then on and he actually looked more like a wolf than a pony.

But it was totally his uncle and from then on, they all knew what happened when you left the safety of their valleys.

Curiosity was the greatest sin, and yet here Wilibald was – lying in a bank of snow that had formed to his chubby sides – and pondering just what he would transform into before he returned home.

Lying on his side, for he found that curling his legs up underneath him wasn’t altogether comfortable in the snow, he looked up at the grey expanse of afternoon sky – it rather looked like it would snow soon. He should move on, find some shelter. His coat was thick – already there were little balls of snow caught all underneath his belly and his chin. He felt at least a hundred pounds heavier because of it but still; the chill would get in before long. He should move on.

But instead he stayed where he was, a happy little pony lying in the snow, and decided to hum himself a little song. For all the strangeness he had seen (one horse with a protrubance out of his forehead was enough for him) at least he could still be relatively satiated (winter was terrible for keeping bellies full) and fully rested. Not a bad day if you looked at it that way!

The happy tune that Wilibald had been singing, a lovely tale about a colt and his clover patch, had distracted him enough from his surroundings that he was thoroughly surprised to hear someone call out. The reaction to the hail was not something anyone would likely be proud of, for the chubby pony very nearly soiled himself. Oh dear, not really. But several other things did happen all at once. His heart rather picked up speed; his body gave a jolt so that his legs and head (being the lighter parts of his body) lifted away from the snow; he hollered a “MAYBELL’S MERCY”; and those eyes quite opened up wide, looking for who it was that had called out.

Oh dear, another tall, lean stranger. Wasn’t there anyone a proper size around here? Interrupting a completely peaceful moment just to ask if he was alright? Well, it was a polite interruption but an interruption nonetheless. He had just been getting to the part about the ample bosom of the clover flowers (his favourite part).

Now that his heart had started to calm down a little bit – were those wings? Were horses breeding with birds now? Oh Wilibald where have you ended up? But there would be none of that just quite yet – certainly in a little while though. He had been posed a question and strange-looking or not, this black and white fellow deserved an answer. “Oh yes, kind sir! Quite well. I was only taking a bit of a nap, you see. The snow is quite agreeable for that.” He leaned back where he laid for another moment, proving his point, before he (grudgingly) got to his feet.

There in the snow was a rather beautiful imprint, if he must say so himself. The snow clung to the side that had been nestled in it, giving him a lopsided appearance as he turned to face the taller male. Now that he was right-side-up he got a better look at those wings. Funny looking appendages, they looked as though they would get in the way of just about everything. How could you comfortably lie on your side with a limb sticking out there?

He tried to remember the stories about winged horses but all he could think of were the angels, and he most certainly was not going to use one of the best pick-up-lines of all time on this stallion as a totally serious inquiry. “I would recommend that you try it but you might find it…” And here, with a pointed look at those wings, the pony harrumphed before continuing. “Difficult.” And finally, there were pleasantries that demanded to be shared. “I am Wilibald, son of Hamfast, and I do thank you for your concern.”