Every time I move sound emits beneath my hooves. It’s a delicate, spine-tingling sound of ice particles rubbing against more ice particles. There’s something satisfying about that chilly crunch, especially if you get to make the first tracks on the ground. I think it has something to do with it being new, as if the world is trying to restart and all that’s left is you and the white sea. So that sound, that lovely, snapping sound, is the world being molded by you and only you.

What I could do if given the world.
I would make sure we did not spiral out of control like we have currently. I wouldn’t let us be cruel or greedy or violent. I would make sure families stay together and that everyone always has a friend.
You need friends in life, you know. Friends teach you to laugh and cry and kick and love. They teach you to hope and to despair, to fight and to walk away. If you didn’t have them, if you didn’t have anyone, you’d be unbalanced. Good always comes with some bad, and things always get worse before they get better. So the world rotates through day and night, shadow and light – so too, do we.

I can’t make my perfect world then, can I? You cannot value something until you’ve lost it. If I try and make sure no one ever loses anything, what would be left to value?

I tilt my head in silent wonder, dark muzzle brushing a hardy plant as I pass by. It tickles me and I exhale with a cloud of smoke, like a dragon. The wind soon carries it away and in her wake she brings me something else.
Snow has begun to fall.

It speckles me into an appaloosa and leaves cold, wet kisses on my body. I grin at the gentle flakes, eyelashes blinking as snowflake and hair tangle together. Through this haze of black and white I see him for the first time. He’s a bit distant still and the white rain does not offer better visibility, but I know him for what he is, a horse.
I strike out at a strong walk.
I am anxious to meet him, to know him, to befriend him. Although I enjoy leaving my footprints in the crisp snow and creating worlds to suit my imagination, it is a lonely thing, being a god. If I am to create I need another to lend me the darkness that I lack. Will he yield sorrow and hate and misfortune into my snowy realm? Will he bring the dark since I would rather hide from it in the day?

My long tail streams behind me like a blanket of water. It stains the pale snow and blots out the perfection of the white field where my dreams roam. So I don’t look back, I just keep going forward towards this stranger. Luckily I am downwind, else his foul aroma would stop me in my tracks and set my ears to uncertain slants. The snow veils him still, but I see enough now to know his color is a painted red and white. His stature is small and nimble; a young colt then, I presume. That makes it all the more likely he’ll be kind to me, although is he lost and trying to get home? I am not cold in this weather, for the flurries are mild and the snow a welcome relief after the past season.
He certainly does not seem distressed.

I stop. My head is high, ears alert. Part of me still doubts the likelihood of companionship – as soon as he knows me mute he’ll turn mean or brush me off, as so many do. I must prevent that; I must show him I am so much more than a dead mouth.

I bring my tail around to my side. It splatters on the snow with a wet smack. I begin to draw as the distance closes between us.
Black trees sprout around him and inky grass sways by his hooves. Dark clouds roam overhead as shadow birds dart through the skies. A jet tiger stalks in the bushes while an ebon elk prances to safety.
This could be the paradise of a different world, a new world.

It melts away quietly.
I gather the forest and the grass and the clouds and the birds and the tiger into a massive ball. It hangs between us, ominous and impressive.
Bit by bit I pull small, black stars from it. I weave galaxies of black holes and moons with perpetual dark sides. I surround us with the universe in so far as I understand it.

It’s my silent way of asking, will you play god with me?

[1/2 - 797 words - Ink uses his magic to imagine a new world and an empty universe for them to try and re-create this world anew, better.]
[edited this and the other post originally to put in the drawing. Edited again today when noticed the drawings were upsetting the blockquote and justification formatting.]

The stranger stands for a moment more as the stars whirl and the planets turn. I bob my head in further invitation. Whether he takes note from this or not I'm sure to never know, bur closer does he come and that's all that truly matters.

With anticipation I lean forward, breath hitched so that the dragon breathing smoke inside me is quieted too. The wind continues to plant snowflake kisses against my sides, the cold at last beginning to seep in like a numbness crawling sluggishly towards a goal it'd rather not attain. I wonder, does snow feel? Does it wish to hold and caress but not drive away? Is it merely a product of its nature, forced into loneliness as it is admired from afar but reveled in briefly as death claims any who frolic longer?

No I think with a child's laugh of playful abandonment. Snow is snow.

When next I blink the stranger before me is nearly at hoof. The snow eddies around us like a pale veil and I blow at it impatiently. I should perhaps learn patience better, for I am not prepared, nor joyful when the stranger does finally arrive, fully fledged, so to say.

His odor hits me almost before the image. This already has me recoiling, my inky world faltering as my focus slips. My head is raised and neck a gentle arch as I subconsciously tilt my nose away from him. Some stupid hope keeps beating on inside me, because at least he has come hasn't he? His silence is unnerving considering the absence of noise I provide, but I do not waver.

That is, not until I see the very face I longed for. Here death smiles at me. I taunted it and begged of it to taint my perfect world. I recognized the blossoming of life as fruitless without the withering of death, but I am not ready for this abrupt thrust of decay upon my beauty. I stagger back, a silent scream clawing in my throat as my eyes are black balls rolling on white paper.

Around us, the world crumbles.
The stars shoot down in elegant arcs and splatter the snow like dark rain. The planets whirl out of control and collide into one another with a blast and spray of ink, like waves colliding. The black holes and the galaxies and the suns all dissipate and eventually clatter to the ground, ruined.

I retreat hastily from this image of death, my body trembling as I cast my tail around me like a protective shawl. If I drew him in here can I erase him out? Never mind what I thought before, the world can go on without death! Look at it now, rubble compared to the utopia before it came. I'm a fool to think I need to subside to anything besides perfection!

Yet I continue to retreat, abhorred and fearful like never before, because in my heart I know otherwise. I cannot escape this - the worlds burned to an early end because they flourished too long unchecked.

Miserable I cast my ink anew at him, feeble.
From my tail darkness crawls like worms and maggots, all writhing and wriggling to swarm him while flowers bloom around me and my sashaying hooves.
I halt.
An inky tether holds us together as worms become stalks and leaves become claws.
I hate you death, but I need you to. How could I know to smile if not having first learned to sob?
Tentatively I take a step towards him and the stars begin to rise.

[2/2 - 599 words - Ink is terrified of zombie Prometheus, but he qualms his fears knowing death inevitable, and tries to show the link between life and death as he tries to rebuild.]

The being, death, comes towards me. He is so close already I stagger back away from him, inwardly showing my personal conflict remains - I want life! He tries to touch me but I am afraid that even the smallest whisker graze will drop me lifeless. I shy away from him, but am reluctant to go too far, eager to know as much as I am to avoid.

He draws around behind me and my ears flick anxiously as I strain to watch him and keep my head steady. I should not show my fear, he will feast upon it wont he?

When my eye catches him again he is whole now. I start, eyes widening in surprise. How could it be? Is this death disguised as life. Better yet, is death life, is life, death? My head spins and I do but barely register the feel of his horn against my spine, the brush of air upon my side. I had always considered life and death so different, complete opposites like love and hate, but now he's thrust upon me this notion they are ultimately one and the same.

He faces me now and I feel like a quivering colt before an ominous shadow of inevitability. He shows me the two sided coin that he is, one side living, one side dying. I bow my head to him, fore surely I stand in the presence of a god, the god.

You think yourself caught in-between worlds Prometheus, but you are the worlds themselves. There are no sides to this coin after all, it's all the same in the end. Life and death - it doesn't matter it is all existing.

In the end that's all we can hope to do.
We exist.

[closing - 301 words - Ink realizes not only is death inevitable, but that life and death are the same. You cannot have one without the other because they are each other, feeding into one another in constant revolution. He sees this reflected in Prometheus and thinks him a god, but hopes that even the sad god understand his own place in the world. The drawing is not Ink using his magic, just a depiction of the scene within the post.]