The gods, or whoever had created the world and all its creatures, had not been amateurs. All had been carefully planned out and executed in a fashion so as to create a perfect orb of ecosystems that ran smoothly, efficiently, and to the eventual benefit of all. Everything that had been created had a place and a purpose, and in the beginning, all had been placed appropriately; they put the fish in the sea, and birds in the air and every worm had its lowly patch of dirt. Only when these creators had placed everything just so did they set the cosmic world on its course. That’s when everything went to hell. If the creators made a mistake, it was in not giving all of their creatures enough sense to stay where they ought to, and indeed to illustrate this failing, there was a pegasus crashing through the underbrush of a dense cropping of trees

She’d been out on patrol towards the Threshold and was attempting to make her way home to the Dragon’s Throat when she’d caught herself in the forest. She had meant to be thorough in her surveillance of the eastern stretch of Helovia, and so early that morning, when it had become impossible to see anything but treetops from above, Meg had made the horrible decision to touch down (or crash down in her case) and continue this leg of the journey on foot. It had started out alright, but as the hours crept closer to midday, the warrior had come to regret it. Here the trees were pressed so close together that the ungraceful girl had a hard time walking with any speed and taking flight was certainly out of the question. This creature of the sky was trapped, through her own making, until she could reach the end of the woods, but she met the challenge by making war on the forest itself. The forest was currently winning.

“God’s curse it!” were among the only intelligible words that spewed from Megaera as she made her ungainly way south through the Deep Forrest. The dark bay mare was caught in one if the thickest patch of the trees, and each step seemed to send of a hideous snap, crack, or crash. Fallen logs loomed out of the shadows to trip her, and coarse branches whipped at her face and grasped greedily at her large feathered wings, leaving behind an increasing number of minor scrapes and scratches. To add to the din, every ounce of annoyance and impatience possible oozed into her muttered diatribe and it seemed to flow unceasing from her scarred muzzle. She snorted in frustration as she came to a fresh patch of brambles, and without even taking a moment to think better of it, Meg surged forward to leap through them. There was another crash, a great tug, and a vicious curse bit their air again.

She was well and properly stuck now. Megaera had jumps a deal to high and a reaching branch had snagged the front half of her now quite tangled mane and tugged her dark head up and now held it high in an unrelenting grip. Only three of her hooves had made it back to the ground, the front right now pawed angrily at the air as trying to set this last one down put an uncomfortable stretch in her neck. “I’ll burn every damn tree in this forest!” Though she knew she had not the power to do so, the threat still felt right in the midst of this arboreal injustice. The mare pushed off from her front as best she could and gave and almighty thrash of her head and though most of her mane came free of the branch and she was able to reach the ground properly, a ripping noise had her snapping still with her head oddly raised. Still firmly entangled in the branch, and now threatening to tear in two was the dingy black ribbon that had been woven into her mane for nearly half her life. Meg did not dare to move; she could see the shard of white bone, strung on the ribbon through the wide round hole, out of the corner of her eye and the thought of dropping it, of losing it, made her stand still as she had not done for ages past. “Damn it!” she hissed, and stared up at her old trophy.