Look down, the ground below is crumbling
Look up, the stars are all exploding
It was a memory that had been swept away into the farthest reaches of her mind, buried beneath the burning imprint of a nightmare, and the macabre monsters that haunted it. She followed the simmering urge as it branched through her miserable heart, believing perhaps that it was just the nagging guilty grief; driving her existence from the night-gripped borderline of her subdued home. A terrible secret dancing across her stiffened tongue; clipped and caged, but threatening always to break through and betray the confidence held by her clan. She shivered, unable to escape the fault, and the shame which pursued her.

The half-built wall rose as ominous shadow through the grim shade of night time, and Africa stepped coyly between the crumble of great limestone blocks towards its edge, rather than allowing herself the privilege of passing with dignity through the unformed gateway. Silas wheeled high aloft the curling currents of salty ocean wind, scanning the area lying ahead of his bonded always, with fine-tuned night vision. Far in the distance he witnessed a soft glow, the ever-burning pit across which he had passed once only, the day after his hatching- though now, its flames were doused. The Zephyr preferred the tranquil darkness which choked their world, but he knew well that warmth would energize, to some degree, the drab spirit of the mare; and if not that, surely some form of food would bask and grow there.

Sweeping forward, he guided her in that direction with naught but the tender link of their hearts.

The crackling of frost beneath her hooves began to fade the nearer she crept to the once molten heart of the land, though it did little to smooth the stress-lines etched throughout her hungry frame. Many, many times Africa had sailed through the blue-sky ocean above, glancing down to marvel at the strange phenomenon which blazed and bubbled below a towering pillar of thick, black-brown smoke. It was a significant landmark, viewed by many to traversed heaven’s highways. There was another time though, long ago maybe, when she had waded through the fringe of long golden grass here on a quest... an adventure? She couldn’t remember.

The frivolity staining her past provoked a sharp, disgruntled snort from the unenthusiastic droop of her nose.

With mild interest, Africa noticed that the pasture she remembered was missing- a supple mattress now perhaps across the ground, a bed of unnourished death. Turning an ear uncertainly forward as she peered downwards, the horse placed a nervous hoof upon the flattened, mulch-strewn periphery of the Heart. The bird tasted her hesitation and swooped lower through the dim, flickering light. Gemstones shined where she stepped, though her hooves seemed to float above them, as though glass sheets lay as thick protection against the wily grasp of greed. Her honey eyes lifted, indifferent and cold.

It was Silas who noticed the stranger first, of course, from his vantage point above the mare. Roused from her cloud of lethargy by his sudden interest, she lifted her skull to peer ahead to where the unfamiliar outline of a horse was shuffling by the pit. A surge of apprehension flooded her awareness with hot, intoxicating adrenaline and Africa paused some distance from him still, waiting and watching; snagged and stuck on the thorn of her own distrust.