It seemed that while he wasn't looking, winter had crept in and taken a hold of the forest. The leaves that had previously crunched loudly underfoot had become coated with a thick layer of snow that made his footfalls almost quiet. He was able to move through his home peacefully, seeming to avoid the group of mares in the thick of the forest that were not only beginning to grow heavy with child, but beginning to resent him for whatever ill he had done them in getting them with child. He did not hold it against them that they should be irritated or angry with him, but he much preferred to give them their distance.

So he wandered through the wintry scene that had taken over his home. While the cold here was not as bitter or thankless as it had been in his first home, the cold wasteland of the cove, the chill was still enough to keep Vercingetorix moving, trying so hard to forget the winters that had kept him stranded on the cove.

The red dun did not plan to go and see if any of his adopted family remained in the cold.

Moving through the trees, he finds himself once more standing near the creek that had cut noisily through the forest in the warmer seasons, only to find that it had become frozen and brittle. He imagined that underneath the hard surface of the ice there was still quickly running water, but he also surmised that the energy it would take to break through would not be worth the pay-off. Leaning forward, one of his hooves presses into the hard surface, making the ice whine beneath his weight, but it does not break. Today he would not be drinking from the cold waters of the creek.

Watching as small cracks frayed out away from where he had put his hoof, the stallion's dark ears twist backwards as he listens to the forest around him. Somewhere in the distance he hears the soft thump of a large mound of snow falling off a tree, but after that the forest remained frighteningly quiet. It seemed his was alone on this side of the forest.

stallion, red dun, crossbreed, fifteen and one hands, russell.