Sciannath was grateful, in his struggle, to feel the warmth of the silver black filly at his side. In contrast to her dark coat, the young girl was bright and bold and warm. Through the brush of their skin, the strength and confidence that Claudya seemed to possess in boundless measures - though a lie she told them both - seeped into the blue colt, buoying him. Ignoring the burning pinch of his laboring lungs, the colt dug deep with his small hooves to lurch upwards and beyond the boundaries of the scree slope. And once beyond its slippery surface, the paths that Sciannath’s sibling chose were no greater a challenge than those found in the rolling hills below - as long as he remembered not to look down. Whenever he did, the little roan’s heart began to thunder again, and his tummy gave a strange lurch, as if trying to figure out how to escape being dragged along on this adventure. They were already so high up, and the top seemed hardly any closer than it had been before!

Of course, he mentioned nothing of his apprehensions to Claudya, who plunged onward with the reckless daring that was one of her most defining characteristics. Adelheid’s daughter had never known fear in quite the same way that Rade’s son had. She didn’t know what it was to be hungry or alone. She didn’t know what it was like to have brushed lips with death. But Sciannath did, and it had tempered the burgeoning life within him - the freedom and energy that longed to be expressed. In that way, having her to lead him into situations such as this one could be seen as a good thing. If Claudya had not existed to draw him out of the shadows of their safe little copse in the lowlands, Sciannath might have been content to hide there forever.

There were limits to his borrowed bravery, however. When they arrived at the crevasse with its overhanging bridge of rock, the red boy balked, planting his little hooves and squeezing his golden eyes shut tight. We can do this, Claudya whispered, to which Sciannath offered a silent shake of his head. At any moment he expected to feel the ledge crumble out from beneath him, sending them both toppling down and down and down. But after a few moments passed in this manner, he peeked out again through slitted eyelids, ready to clench them shut again at the slightest sign of danger. “I - I don’t know if I can,” the dark colt admitted in a rueful voice. “I’m scared that we’ll fall.” Of course, going back down the mountain didn’t sound too easy - or appealing - either. And they couldn’t just stand here forever.

Finally, like a condemned prisoner heading for the gallows, Sciannath began to shuffle forward. The steps he took were so small that it would require at least two of them to match one of his normal strides, but neither his gaze nor his steady progress faltered until he’d reached the other side. Only then did the colt stop, suddenly aware of the way that his legs felt like rubber, and his dusty skin trembled. “Claudya?” he asked in a soft quavering voice, trying to ascertain whether or not the filly had made it across with him. He didn’t even want to look back, and yet he knew that if she called out to him from somewhere behind, he would go to her - as she had been there for him many times already.