It was too hot, too hot, and she hated how much the sun oppressed her, oppressed the plants. She kept to the shadows, under the wilting trees, against the cool stone. Occasionally she would shoot angry glares at the unforgiving sky, red eyes narrowed and furious, tail lashing angrily. She had seen weather like this, without rain or cloud or wind, she thought; but maybe she was wrong, and she had not, and this had actually been the weather forever and she was just remembering yesterday. The heat made it harder than usual for her to think, for her to create an idea of an image of a tree growing happily in front of her, great branches reaching for a stormy sky, drinking up the rain as it poured from the sky and drenched the ground soaking into its roots and nourishing it, nourishing every cell of every tissue and making it grow and thrive and-

Smack!

She walked into a tree, or perhaps the tree walked into her, and only now that she was looking at it it was stationary. She could never be sure with trees, because trees were tricky old creatures. She tilted her head, confused. This tree did not look tricky. This tree, she thought, looked awfully dead. This was saddening to her fuzzled mind, for although she saw trees die with frequency, it was unfortunate that the only tree here should be so close to falling. She sniffed it, curious, because it smelled like tree and earth and predator. Predator? Predator. Odd. Pale nose rose up, up, up to the top of the tree - and there it was, a large cat-bird-thing with wings. She thought it looked funny. She thought it might want to eat her.

Then she noticed the other two, and her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Maybe these were just illusions, magic of the heat? But it was not as hot as she had been enduring these past weeks; actually, when she thought about it, it was rather cold. She did not know how long she had been standing, staring at the tree; how long they had known she was there. Couldn't have been more than a minute. Somehow, though, she felt embarrassed because of it, even though she thought she like the tree quite a bit and it was foolish of them to judge her for admiring it and that big cat with wings should try not to break it. She crept around the tree nervously, peering out at the black stallion and the small, sky-spotted filly - and up again at the big winged cat bird thing.

Then she looked at the ground. "It's a really nice tree," she muttered defensively, eyes downcast, hoof pawing sheepishly at the frozen tundra, vines on her side curling up into small tendrils with slight, defensive thorns poking out from their inky depths. She was not quite sure what actions she was defending, or why, but it seemed like the thing to do, and so she did it.