Around her, the world begins to stir; the first tentative notes of bird song weave a melody through the steady drumming of raindrops on the canopy overhead. The first of the sun's rays penetrate the eternal twilight of the Atlantean jungle, dappling the emerald fronds and lavender orchids with beads of light. Pacing in an endless vigil along the Ridge's promontory, however, Lilika does not see the beauty that surrounds her. Her chocolate eyes are distant, glazed-over with a film of sorrow as she thinks of the Prairie. The vast expanse had been overwhelming at first, intimidating to a mare who had been accustomed to the boundaries of a fence throughout the first vital years of her life. But in time she had learned to appreciate the beauty of her new home, a beauty that did not rely on the jeweled colors prevalent here. The seamless carpet of grass, the endless sea of the sky that had been interrupted only by each other.

The dense jungle here was a prison.

Pausing her relentless pacing for the breadth of a moment, the roan mare leans forward at the very edge of the precipice. With nothing to keep her grounded save the precarious balance her hooves maintain, she could be suspended in midair, flying. Flying home. "Home," the mare sighs wistfully, the barest hint of a smile curving her lips upward. Snow would undoubtedly be covering the Prairie in a soft, ashen blanket right now. She'd enjoyed rolling in the cold down, emerging once with a blanket to match Gnome's. They had laughed together, and then raced through the snow...

Her return to reality is as abrupt as the halt of the approaching hoof beats that the mare had presumed to be a product of her memories. Beads of perspiration roll down her neck; there was no winter here. It was as if Atlantis existed outside the influence of time, a sweltering purgatory. Clambering down from her precarious perch, the blue roan mare turns to greet her eldest daughter with as much enthusiasm as she can muster, masking the naked pain in her eyes.

"Did you and Eve get your fill of the coast already? I didn't expect to see you so-" The words fade to a whisper as Lilika reads the intense agony and anxiety in Iris's eyes. Stumbling forward like a blind creature seeking the sun, she struggles to move her numb, ashen lips, to ask the question every mother hopes to never speak. "Iris, what happened to Eve - is she -?" The last word is strangled on her lips, indecipherable; buried beneath a cry of pain and denial.

mare .. 5 years .. blue roan .. moriesian .. 16 hands