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 year-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 the sun was low in the sky, and Diamant hesitated at the threshold of ascent, considering waiting until the next morning to make the climb. He did not know that in the summer the sun never truly set here, but that did not matter. His legs ached, his stomach groaned with hunger, and his ears hurt from the constant assault of the chilly wind.

He thought of Inka again and felt suddenly drained. Yes. He would wait.

The young stallion turned away from the mountain to search for shelter. He ducked into the trees, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the low lighting, and followed a natural trail in the foliage until the woods broke away into a small clearing. The wind was not so harsh here, and the springy, mossy ground promised a soft bed. It was as good a place as any to succumb to blissful unconsciousness for a while.