I crawled out of the cold water, my coat matching the pale morning sky. My barrel was huge and heavy, but my legs were strong despite their delicate appearance and the muscles beneath the silvery skin of my shoulders and hindquarters showed. The place was vaguely familiar; I had lived here once, for about a week, expecting something but not receiving whatever it was and in my uncertainty and boredom I had left.

As the air grew colder and I finally realized what was making my belly expand so drastically, I struggled to remember where it was Vercingetorix had lead me, where I had lived for such a short time. I knew the child was his; I had encountered no other stallion before or since, so I set off with that certainty to find his home again.

Now that I was here, bitter air tasting only of the promise of spring and not spring itself, I recognized my surroundings and stepped without hesitation into the trees. I had to thrust ungracefully through the foliage; though most of it consisted only of naked branches and occasionally thorns, not yet tangled and thick with green, my substantial body seemed to reach to either side in an attempt to touch every pair of obstacles I walked between.

It smelled more and more of horse the farther into the forest I wandered. I let out a call, loud enough to startle a bird I didn’t know perched next to my head, which in turn caused me to scramble in panic away from the commotion. I cast my gaze about, wondering if the sight’s comical value had been wasted on absent eyes.