Diamant

He had never been so cold.

Inka had spoken many times of the island she had been raised on, the island where there was snow almost near-round, where her father watched over a herd of fellow Friesians, and where the winter nights were so long it was as though there would never be true daylight again. Diamant had known, coming to this place, that it would be cold. But Inka had always spoken of it so highly that he had not quite grasped just how cold it would truly be.

In retrospect, he now knew why the mare that had raised him had never come back.

It was desolate, too. The young stallion wandered for days without seeing another soul, and any scents he found were old or not equine. Part of him wanted to leave and never come back, but another part relished the bleak solitude. He had not been himself since Inka's death, and he did not feel ready to be part of a new social group. He was too angry with the world, too disenchanted with existence.

At the very least, there was a strange kind of beauty about Tinuvel. Though the land was wide and flat and hardly bore any trees, there was an ancient stillness to it, as though it had not been touched by the outside world in a million years. And mountains loomed in the distance, capped white with snow, like a reminder of his childhood home. It was toward these mountains that he eventually trekked, in the faint hope that at least one or two souls might still be lingering among the shelter of their slopes.

It took hours to reach them. They were larger than he had expected, for they hardly seemed to grow any closer the longer he walked, until all at once they were right there, towering so high he had to crane his neck to see the top. By this time what little daylight there had been was nearly gone, and Diamant hesitated at the threshold of ascent, considering waiting until the next morning to make the climb. His legs ached, his stomach groaned with hunger, and his ears hurt from the constant assault of the chilly wind.

He was just beginning to glance around for some promising shelter when he heard a cry. Pricking his ears, he tested the air but could sense nothing for a few moments more; when finally the sound came again, he realized that it came from a small wooded area behind him. Was it an animal in pain? It almost sounded as though someone was crying, but surely that was unlikely in this desolate place. Then again, it was like no creature he had ever heard before.

The young stallion turned to investigate, creeping across the heathery ground as quietly as his huge hooves would allow. He ducked into the trees, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the low lighting, and followed the sound until suddenly the woods broke away into a small clearing. There lay a grieving chestnut mare at the roots of a few massive trees. Diamant froze and watched her for a few moments, uncertain what to do. Then he realized that he knew her. The last and only time they had seen each other, he had been a gangly, shy little thing. Now he was a stallion, full-bodied and muscular, and still almost just as shy, but he remembered her all the same.

He cleared his throat to announce his presence, then took a step or two closer. "Pardon me," he said in a soft, quiet baritone. "Is that you, Macabre? Are you all right?"