Nothing burns like the cold

Caliber sniffed around his mother’s hooves. Her fetlocks were speckled with white hairs, and the colt lipped at them; there hadn’t been so many a few days ago. He flicked his big ears around. His mother was strange. And asleep right now, which was unusual, Caliber thought as he realized this. He peered up at her from where he was tucked behind her right shoulder, letting out a little huff of air to see if she would respond. She didn’t. Mercury was quite soundly asleep, and Caliber actually puffed out his chest with pride. He had been protecting her fiercely ever since she had run away from that dead horse. He could tell she was sad and scared and assumed the dead horse was evil and would come back to get her. She was probably sad because that filly had run back to the horse and surely had been eaten.

But Caliber wasn’t worried in the least. He kept quiet so that the dead horse couldn’t hear them and come find them, and he was always ready to fight it off if it found them anyway. Mercury never spoke, so Caliber never spoke either. Probably because their voices would give them away, he thought. Mercury was too smart to give them away with her voice. She was smart about most things, but she never slept, which Caliber didn’t think was very smart at all. Now, at least, she was sleeping, and the little black colt was determined not to wake her up. Or let her get eaten. He would wake her up if she were about to get eaten, but that was it.

For the next twenty minutes or so the black colt drifted around Mercury and made sure no one snuck up on her to eat her or wake her up. He plodded as quietly as possible through the tall, tangled grass around them, wondering why Mercury sometimes put it in her mouth. He was confused as to why she ate the grass, but dismissed it as just a substitute for milk; he could reach the place Mercury kept the milk, but Mercury probably had some trouble and so it was just easier for her to eat grass. Even so, the stuff didn’t look very good to eat. Caliber chewed experimentally on a few rough blades. It was okay, but it made his soft mouth sore. Maybe Mercury was used to it.

The taste wasn’t bad, though, and Caliber began sniffing around for some softer stuff. Maybe down by the water? He began to wander down the slope, toward the smell of mud and water and another horse.

Wait. Another horse? Caliber halted, his little head held stiff and high while his ears searched for a sound to match the scent. Yep, there it was - a little rustling over to his left. He put his dark head down and his ears back and trotted purposefully over, breaking into a lanky gallop and leaping into the bushes. His impressive entrance was somewhat dampened by the fact that his front legs got tangled midair, so instead of landing gracefully on his front feet, he landed ungracefully (and painfully) on his knees, and tumbled forward onto his face. His rump teetered precariously in the air for a second before falling solidly to the ground with the rest of his sore and tangled self.

Dirty and frustrated, Caliber scrambled up to face his opponent, a tall grey mare. She looked entirely too happy to be here, and the colt let out a furious snort. She was too close to Mercury, and Caliber was going to chase her away.