Fear and confusion assaulted Dante’s senses.

The sand beneath him felt uncomfortably rough against his sensitive skin, like a thousand needles raking across his body. He was hot and feverish, lathered in a sticky layer of sweat; his sleep was restless, fidgeting and squirming incessantly. The shade of the small bushes he had curled up beside did little to relieve him from the Sun’s relentless heat, but it was not the weather that made him so uncomfortable.

With a snort Dante’s eyes snapped open, and he was on his feet in seconds, damp sand flying in every direction as he scrambled around. His one-eyed gaze flitted anxiously around him, ears twitching alertly, expression panicked. His wet, russet body was covered in a fine layer of sand after his nap, and his crimson mane and tail were tangled wildly.

The overall impression was a slightly deranged one.

It took him several long minutes of staring out at the horizon to calm himself and order his chaotic thoughts, and several minutes longer for him to realise that the noises he could hear were no longer the creations of his own mind.

Slowly, he turned his head to see an unfamiliar figure making its way along the tree line. It appeared to be a mare, splashed with white, head low and posture exhausted. He watched her for a few minutes, until he was almost sure that she was not a hallucination, and then gradually made his way over to her, stumbling slightly on the sand in his disoriented state.

As he drew closer, Dante could see that the mare was young, and that her face was wet from tears. The fact that she was a stranger was unsurprising: he had long since grown used to his random visitors, and had even come to savour and enjoy them. She looked little better than him, jumpy and bedraggled. Concern wrinkled his expression as he paused a short distance away, though his thoughts were still too fogged to give it any further sophisticated interpretation.

“Are you alright?” he croaked.

DANTE
a man possessed of some radical notions