WIPE YOU CLEAN WITH DIRTY HANDS
The past was a wild animal.
And it hunted, of this she was sure. No matter where she went or how hard she tried to forget, those memories followed her. They sunk sharp claws into her. The scars run clear patterns in the thickness of her coat, along her muzzle and between her eyes. Scars with stories, scars with faces. Scars inside no one else could see but still, she could feel them. Like tiny etches on her heart, creating a portrait she doesn't recognize anymore.
Perhaps it is better this way. Thrown into a world she doesn't know. So far away even her past cannot catch up, at least not physically.
Echidna sighs, she shakes out her mane, which is a tangled mass. Twigs and thorns and tiny rocks and feathers. She hasn't rested in a lifetime, or that's how it felt to her. Bone tired. Still, she smells the mare before she hears her and quietly Echidna turns to give the smallest glance. Her dark eye sizes up the strange, there is a sigh, and the little mare returns to looking in the icy water instead.
"Echidna," she says.
There is a pause, her mouth lowers to skim across the surface of the water, and then she coughs. "I keep to myself," she says and her voice is like granite breaking, "you should probably pick someone else to be your friend."