Essetia
I told you once, I told you twice
Have you no ears, have you no eyes?
If this is love then what is hate?
Do you understand my fate?

The soft crackling of footfall brought the foal to a pause. Her chest heaved slightly as fear mounted in her heart. Within those pallid eyes a sense of alarm rose and colored them in the deepest of figurative blues. For a moment her thoughts strayed far from reality and into an alternate world made of childish fantasies. The warm cavern in which she hid allowed her to move once more into the mists despite a silent opposition that hung tightly around her conscious. However, the little foal jumped slightly upon crossing paths with a creature in which she had never seen before. It had appeared before her as quietly as the mists themselves because its movements were muted by the soft padding beneath its toes and its gaze held meaning far beyond the foal’s ability to grasp what it was.

At least for now.

The child stared on quietly as if deciding whether or not to bolt into the shadows in hopes of outrunning the ghostly figure, but she could not move and instead surrendered her attentions to the pale apparition as she would her own mother. Spirals of white light seemed to illuminate the canine in a mystic aura and its jovial tunes that now haunted the forest influenced the filly to follow in its ghostly footsteps. Something about her song forced the child into believing that whatever this creature wanted, it meant no harm. It carried no scent other than the stale stink of death and when it had drawn close enough for the child to look into the depths of its dark eyes, she saw only years of stagnant existence. Endless observation.

But, in a state of weary interest, the youth follows all the same. In and out of the shadows she weaves through the forest and into its unruly depths where she finally pauses to glance around. Unsure of everything except for her diligence to the ethereal creature upon whose heels she faithfully trails, she recognizes a strange light ahead. With no explanation, the canine bends to touch the small orb of light with a tender muzzle and then looks eagerly to the child again before it is gone entirely.

Without any knowledge of consequence, she moves forth to bend closer to the orb herself and it stirs. Whatever existed inside seemed to weigh heavily enough of her mind that leaving it here in the dark was something that the small child hadn’t even considered. She would take the orb along with her when she returned to her mother in hopes of finding an explanation for its existence. Until then, she nudged it softly and the shock that it gave warmed a part of her heart that she had never known of.