DIAMANT
With winter came the long dark. It was something Diamant had never experienced before, and had he been forewarned, he might have shrugged off the idea. He may even have thought constant nighttime could be a pleasant reprieve from the starkness of naked sunlight.
In reality, however, it was an experience he did not relish.
He had never before noticed how the cycles of the sun had an effect on his mood. Now, without it to track his days or monitor his sleep, he was feeling the repercussions. His heart had never felt so black, and his future had never felt so hopeless. He awoke to a black sky every day, only to remember anew that he was a captive in a strange land, with a mother that was dead in the ground.
All that carried him onward was his instincts. He ate, he drank, and he kept near to the herd not because he wanted to, but because every day it grew colder, every day the snow became deeper, and every day he knew a little more that he could not continue to sulk in isolation - not if he was going to survive the winter. He had never known such an extreme, harsh climate, and he was not prepared to try going it alone.
Though his thick seasonal coat was growing in quickly, it was still thin enough for him to be chilled to the bone before the others, and so he retired to the warm, sheltering caves earlier than the rest of them. By the time the blizzard hit and the rest of the herd followed suit, he had found a small nook just wide and tall enough for him to hide in. It branched away from a larger cave and was accessible only by a tight, winding passage, and he was pleased to find that it had its own narrow entrance to the outdoors, which he could use to enter and exit at will without passing through the larger cavern where the others might be residing.
He was dozing in this secret nook, listening to the wind howl through the cracks in the rock when he heard hooves on stone. The young stallion tensed and listened, but all was quiet for a while. Likely a herd member had come to shelter in the larger cave.
He had just begun to doze off again when a sharp, echoing gasp set his heart to racing - the kind of gasp that usually was followed by weeping. His curiosity piqued, he carefully felt his way through the dark nook into the passageway, where he peeked around the wall of rock inch by inch until he could see just a sliver of the larger cave ahead. There was a pale figure faintly illuminated by the snowy entrance beyond. Mariael.
His ears pricked forward and his heart hardened. For a moment he simply watched her. He had been meaning to confront the Queen again for some time now; and now was the perfect opportunity, but there was nothing he wanted to do less at the moment. He wanted to brood in peace. He wanted to sleep and forget about existence.
He moved a forehoof to begin the awkward reverse manouver back through the narrow passage, and to his horror the movement sent a rock clattering loudly across the cave floor.
He froze, mentally kicking himself. There was no way she hadn’t heard that.
Expecting to hear her call out for him to reveal himself at any moment, Diamant gave in. Fate had decided for him. He stepped out of the passage and into the larger cavern, his head ducking past a low-hanging stalactite, and his eyes focused on the shadowed silhouette of Mariael.
He stared at her in silence and waited.
FRIESIAN; 17’2HH; BLACK; FOUR
|