Meadow

They are children once again.

Kicking and biting, the snow made into slush beneath their hooves, they are enticed into the great din of the winter. Her childhood whips back into her mind’s eye, a scene of frolicking colts that beckoning her to play while her mother mussed about her matted and tangled fluff of a red mane. A child, once so coddled and tucked away by her mother, now erupted forth with the great churn of her striped red legs, and she is a sight to behold.

A smile on her face and the snow that kicks up behind her and splatters her skin is all she wears to dinner tonight. The grullos teeth jab at her haunches, playfully, but she squeals all the same, tossing her head and letting a red mane flip wildly from her neck.

For a moment, she is a cheerful flurry of legs and hooves, flying in front of her and kicking out behind her, her body a bobbin dancing across the sand as she bounces. Up, down. Up, down. Like a bronco at a fair, there is no precision to her kicks, and there is another squeal that rips from her dark lips and cuts across the meadow.

They are two creatures at play, entwined in some friendly combat in the meanwhile.

The boy is quick, and Sighurd finds herself skidding, her hooves digging deep into the snow and kicking up mud and melting snow alike as she changes direction. Now laughing as her body twists and she launches herself after him, finding herself keeping pace with his butt-end, she reaches out joyfully to his back, trying to rake her teeth along his spine.