Away. He had to get away from those cursed shores. Even the shadows refused to shield him alone from the presence of others. What he knew, the silence he had wrapped about himself for so long and hid within continued to be broken. Why? Why did they continue to invade? They did not belong about him just as he did not belong about them. But again and again like little shards of light piercing his dark world they appeared. You are no one. Most saw that. Saw the empty emotionless gaze, the almost defeated slump to his silhouette as he followed the path that had been set before him, heard the hollow tones gruff from lack of use. They realised he did not belong. But some refused to see, to allow him to slip back into the enveloping numbness. And it had begun upon that island. Enough was enough. Energy was pulled from reserves rarely touched, life pushed to strong limbs some days so accustomed to being still for many hours. He ran as he rarely ran, raven mane and tail streaming back in the winds greedy fingers, the ebony statue come to momentary life as he surged across the lands back to the shores he had emerged upon not all that long ago. Frost glinted upon the ground flowing by beneath him, but the glistening frozen droplets went unnoticed. The beauty was passed as though the devil raced upon his heels. He would swim. Out into the autumn’s unkind waves until his hooves found solid ground or the dark grey waters claimed his numb body. Spray burst into the air as the stallion ran through the surf, his broad chest breaking the waves that beat against him pushing him back. You are nothing. And so he would be nothing out in the sea's. Eyes did not turn back, but stared onwards fixing on an unseen point in the distance. Onwards, onwards, onwards. After a time the expanse of nothing began to dull the stallion’s senses. Where better for him to be? It would have been so easy to swim on and on until his detached soul slipped beneath the dark waves. But though all those years ago that young colt had taken his mother’s words to heart, the need to survive had pushed him through time. He could have let the mare take her final frustrations out upon him back then and fallen to her hooves. But something within him had refused to given in then as it did now. He would never truly live. He was not worthy of life. But he would survive until the fated deemed it his time. Each kick through the water became so automatic at first the changes passed him by. The cold began to edge away, the grey in the surrounding water took on a brighter azure hue. He barely noticed the land forming upon the horizon dead ahead and might have swum straight by had not he reached the shallowed, hooves churning clouds of sand in the waters before recognising the sight before him. He had arrived. Where? As ever, he cared not. But he was there. With a snort sending a spray of salty water from his airways he heaved his dark frame from the waters, droplets streaming down his sides as heavy steps drew him away from the surf. Eyes blinked, watching, searching as they spanned up the shores, to the treeline upon slopes forming further inline. There. There, there would be shadows, there he could just be another amongst them. Drained limbs protested as he moved again, but as ever it was pushed away to the depths of his mind. But even the stallion’s distant thoughts could not miss the changes about him. The absence of the bone reaching cold he had grown accustomed to. The flourish of greenery autumn had not managed to remove. It was noted, but he did not stop to wonder. The treeline awaited him. His shadows. His silence.