The fruit was so sweet upon my tongue and I was so distracted by its tangy juices and ripe texture that I almost missed the flippant song filtering through the dense limbs of the tree itself. I nodded in time with the beat, lost or perhaps mesmerized by the festivities coming to life around me. I smiled at my companions as I made my way back along the bridge-like structure I’d followed to the tree, but as soon as I set foot back upon to frozen grasses on the lake’s shore, I noticed an incessant buzzing at my ear. I shook my massive head in order to rid myself of the nuisance but it remained. In fact, a single fly had turned into what sounded like ten as they traversed my skin and dance along my tender wings. In another attempt to rid myself of the pests, I shuddered harshly and used my thickly chorded tail to slap at my flanks. But I could not evade the vermin for they had started to amass around me, nearly suffocating me in their monotone song. It was dissonant of course and though I wondered if this had anything to do with what had happened to me in the Steppe only days before, it didn’t appear to bear much of a resemblance.

Hurriedly, I glanced around to my brethren to see if they too were dealing with the onslaught of insects but I only had to blink once in order to confirm that they were. In a new wave of panic, I gathered myself to outrun the plague, but found that my hooves were planted in place. The hard soil had softened beneath me and welled up around my toes in order to trap me just beyond the shore. I continued to bat away the flies with the only thing I could still move easily- my tail. They had not overcome me yet, but the relentless itch of their feet against my skin seemed to travel inward causing me to convulse from the sensation. A moment later, I heard the waters of the quiet lake splashing as the makeshift bridges gave way beneath an invisible force and as they did I noticed the changing of the thick tree at the lake’s center. Our moon’s bright face cast a bright light upon its branches, illuminating a new horror that I was sure would outweigh the nightmares I’d witnessed in the Steppe.


When my eyes landed on the tree once more, I noticed that the luscious fruit were no longer the delicious seedlings they’d once been; instead they’d been transformed into various parts of rotting decay. Distraught eyes looked on with empty, dead, fear as I gazed at the most monstrous sight I’d seen in my life. Various corpses hung lazily from the changing tree; their limbs, their organs, and their dense crimson blood embodied the very trunk from which I’d plucked my navy fruit. The heavy taste of rotting flesh made my tongue thick and dry. I wanted to spit or vomit or dip my face into the cool waters of the lake, but I was unmoving. I was trapped yet again. When the flies moved in once more, I was lost in their mass. They trickled about from the darkness until they paid homage to the only part of my being that I feared worst. Dare I not speak of where they hid, but the pain was immense and my cries were only muted. But suddenly, as before, everything disappeared and I was left to wonder if what I’d witnessed were even reality.