Zahra, Ilham, and Hanna

It was pride that turned angels into devils

Soon after Zahra fell into well-earned silence, the two-toned stallion began to answer, apologise, to which the foal nodded most forgivingly. She figured, based on his explanation that he was new to Helovia – Threshold Forest new – and her obnoxious stare softened to something a little more natural, tender and sweet. By her mother’s flank when still the sun had caused plant-life to wither, the learning foal had witnessed the arrival of many such horses; ’funnelled down through the labyrinth, this forest’ the loving mare had suggested on many of those occasions. It all made sense in the child’s small mind and quickly her looming stance, shrank back to that of the starved, sickly waif she actually was. “S’ok…” she hummed gently when first the opportunity arose, but mostly she just listened as he continued his turn.

Bird was not at all moved by the stallion’s paternal instinct and shifted to and fro around the egg whenever his nose dared too near. Despite the slow predictability of his gesturing, she was in no way ready to breach the walls of suspicion which had grown by then, like a fierce, fiery fortress between them (between any fixed on interaction with the filly). Still, the egg was not her concern, it was her sisters; more still, the laying strangers, and she cared little for its welfare. The instructed warmth she attempted to share was mild as the great sloping cheek held position beside the coolish orb.

He smiled distractedly and his discomfort with the equally unimpressed canine’s proximity did not pass unnoticed. Bird, she called softly, as only even a slight breath to rival the whining wind, but the kitsune’s ears were keen and she retreated hastily, sinking into the woody line of grove trees behind the foal. Still Zahra watched unaffectedly, eyes smiling down as he revealed his brokenness – not entirely the same as the unusual horn descending his forehead. She was trying desperately to understand. A good broken… she repeated in thought alone, like Zero. She might have compared his grim horn to the naked shoulder worn by her mother also, though memory of the mare's face was oddly blurred, a stranger in her past without name or features to retrieve.

The filly’s eyes had furrowed intensely.

...because?

The stallion carried on after a small pause.

“I can fix ya?” she proposed boldly and assuredly, like she had fixed a thousand other bleeding bodies before him. Again, unexpectedly, she seemed to slip from the present, and a mammoth black and white stallion leered awfully down upon her, granite cliffs rising about her like sheer prison walls; the empty stomach tucked beneath her pointed hips seemed to lurch nauseatingly, and Zarha shook the startling vision from her eyes. “I can…” she muttered disjointedly after, disorientated, eyes refocusing and searching for some part of her company that might perhaps not spur another episode to life.

They found the hindquarters of the stallion, scarlet smeared crudely over a fleshy white rump (that which wasn’t entirely beneath the water. “I…” Avoiding his eyes entirely now (convinced that those depthless black holes held each horror), and with Bird gazing after her concernedly, she ventured nearer to his thigh. The water was freezing as one black hoof slipped fetlock-deep before its bleeding twin followed, so cold in fact that every fine hair dressing her thin body stood up on end. “Argh!” she squealed, and leapt swiftly from the lake’s numbing bite.

“Too cold in there,” she mentioned, shivering uncontrollably with teeth chattering noisily. Her white mask turned to survey the area again; desperate to find their brother emerging through the grove ceremoniously – but alas there was no sign of Camon. Zahra wasn’t at all sure how she would bring the stallion out of the water if he couldn’t himself rise. “I dunno, but I think ya legs might be frozen solid in there,” she cooed gingerly. There was a candid grimness to her tone too as she looked back to study the forelegs to the front. “I ah…

Why’d ya even go in?

Is ya brain broken too? I can’t fix that I think.”