It was difficult to say when her consciousness began. Like a star is built slowly, gas and rock condensing over many thousands of years, so too did she grow from the tiniest speck of potential floating in the darkness. Before her thoughts could be separated or defined by any earthly language there were fundamental truths that already made up who she was: she was safe, she was growing, and she was not alone. As long as she could be sure of anything, she was sure of the life, the light, that grew beside her and the one that surrounded them both and held them safe in the warm darkness. Time, as far as she could understand, was measured in the steady waves of vibration and sound (the heartbeats of the one that held them) but to one who knew no better, those beats might as well have measured centuries or seconds. Whatever the whim of fate held in store for her in life, however isolated she might become in later years, at least she did not have to face the start on her own. It was comforting at first, to have a point of reference as she floated in the darkness, but then the darkness shrunk, (or maybe they grew) and the gentle nudges of the other one became shoves as their roomy home became too small to hold them.
 
She moved because somehow she had to, an instinct that insisted she stretch and exercise her body to prepare it for...well, for something. Still, the other was always more active than she, maybe not bigger, but certainly bolder, and he seemed to shove her endlessly. It was her first lesson in patience and it would always serve her well. The first moment of unease that the little one ever experienced was when their home seemed to constrict around them, the already too-small space shrinking, and then the other left her. Even if the warm darkness was a bit more comfortable, the absence was a discomfort, a change in the safe norm that was all she’d known, so she followed.
 
Even in the cover of night, everything was so very bright when the little filly followed out and into the blessed world. The blur of color and shape was only a fraction of the wave of strange new sensations that washed over her. The smells of the desert, the heat of her other’s familiar shape beside her, and the new but wholly comforting feeling of the presence of the one who had held them. Brother, mother, she would learn the words eventually, but both were close, and gave her comfort as she adjusted to her new surroundings. For several precious moments it was just the three of them, the gentle voice of her mother brushing over them before fading into silence.

Silence only for the shortest breath and then the world itself seemed to panic, or at least all the newborn filly knew to be the world. A flapping, feathery thing was screaming at her mother, and more arrivals were moving, speaking, hovering around the still form of the bay mare. Everyone was too fast, too loud, and the girl let out one frightened bleat as she tried to struggle to her feet. There was a big one, a scary one, with a deep voice and then all at once her mother was covered in orange lights that shifted and shimmered. On legs that wobbled beneath her, she started to back away, seeking the safety of the dark and the quiet again. But her mother rose, and though she did not understand yet the words she spoke, the sounds pulled her forward and she wobbled back to tuck herself into the safety of the mare's wings and seek out a first meal.
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