oh, sweet thing! zion doesn't love you!
and babylon don't love you!

Her morning stretch took her across the Heavenly Fields and up to the rocky Steppe, the wind rippling through her long, long hair as she climbed higher into the north. The landscape below was growing steadily paler; even days before, it had seemed warmer, drier, and the air not so thin as today. Alighting on a tall crag, she wrung her wings out, folding one set and holding the others aloft for balance, in case of a sudden draft. “When do you suppose the snow will reach us? Week or two? The sky’s so gray,” she remarked, gaze roving across the flat expanse. Even with the patchy blackness of the rock below, there might have been no different between earth and sky, just a gradient. Rock. Cloud. Shifting gray heather. White fleck.
 
White fleck? “What is that?” Her long neck craned forward, ears pointed— And then she gasped—
 
And fell.
 
“Oh my God (and may He Dream forever)— oh my G—” Snapdragon’s yowl was lost in the rush of wind as the girl instinctively pinned her wings close, leaning hard into the dive; her pupils flit between the ground and something in the distance, her thoughts a high wall of alarm. Tiny claws dug hard into the skin of her neck, panic strung across their bond like a blunt, discordant note, but it hardly reached her, she couldn’t pacify him— She could only will her body to move faster, harder, and as the ground veered up to meet them her wings snapped out like sails, shaking and stirring the heather as she skimmed like a knife across their tops.
 
Not a fleck. Not a fleck at all. And the thought wrapped around her heart like a vice.
 
Eventually her momentum tapered off, and she coasted to a rolling stop, the rush of air blending seamlessly into the rhythm of her hooves as she hurried over the last few yards. Dead? Where they dead? Had the wind, sweeping through the shrubbery, merely disturbed the bones and the skin stretched from point to point? If they were dead this was fairly simple; the earth would swallow them up in time. But if they were alive?
 
What would Tilney do?
 
“Oh God, oh God,” she began again, falling to her knees beside the girl – and it was a girl, pale as ice, and a familiar one, too. An Edger. She remembered the distinctive coat and the spiraling horns from that dreadful meeting, and from the horror of the brambles. And her name? What was her name? No matter, no matter, she thought frantically. The filly’s chest was still moving, if barely, and a vibrant blot of red was spreading through the otherwise pristine hair. Blood, the smell thick in Ultima’s nostrils. (And something else, like the air before a storm – but no matter, no matter, time for that later, later, later.) Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly through grit teeth, the Medic – only recently promoted, still fresh from her apprenticeship, still fresh from everything – gathered her wits and her prayers.
 
The heath answered.
 
Creeping up from the dirt, the roots of the heather wound themselves gently around the girl’s body, covering the wound and the bruisey knees with pulsing magic. Ultima felt separate from her body, counting the seconds as they slipped by. How long had the girl been bleeding? Who had done this? Why was she so far north? Oh, but no matter, no matter, no matter—
 
“Wake up,” she said softly, and then louder, firmer, “Wake up!”