From the moment he was born he’d known chaos.

First it was the red mare’s hooves and teeth, snapping the tenuous thread that linked them and setting the fraying ends ablaze. His ears rang from the echo of her voice, the tender muscles of his hips bruised beneath the flesh where she’d made rough contact. He didn’t know why she had hurt him, she who looked like him, she who smelled like him, she who had cradled him inside her womb and given pieces of herself to make him. He didn’t understand - he wasn’t old enough to form the words for it, or to even grasp the concept of it, nor the true gravity of what she’d done. He only knew what his instincts told him: that she wasn’t safe anymore, if she ever had been at all.

With certain death at his back, and the terrifying abyss of the unknown at his front, he’d had no choice but to move forward - alone.

It was only natural, then, that he’d been drawn to the chaos unfolding merely a short distance down the beach.

The colt skitters out of reach at the speckled mare’s advances, dark eyes wide with alarm. She was cloaked in crimson, akin to the one whose killing blows he’d just narrowly escaped, and he feared another strike - but her words came soft, and as she shifted to open her body to him further, his nares caught the cloying scent of milk. His stomach churned; he’d only gotten a few pulls before being kicked away by the tall red woman, and crossing the uneven sands on his spindly legs had worn him out. After a few moments, his resolve crumbles, and he totters forward on unsteady legs, clacking his salmon-pink gums in supplication right up until he latches on. Having found his prize, he suckles greedily, taking as much as he can get before she, too, pushes him back.

The brush of her lips might as well have been a pinch for how it startles him. He releases her, milk dribbling down his chin, and stumbles clumsily back, unable to see the affection held there for the panic clouding his mind. Don’t hurt me, he pleads without words, champing and tensing every part of his burnished golden frame. He refuses every encouragement, every kind glance and murmured call, and holds himself on the fringes.

The red mare hadn’t left him with much - no name beyond beast, no home beyond this lonely sandbar, and no life beyond that which she was forced to give. She’d tried to snatch it back, and though she failed to crush his skull beneath her hooves, she had snuffed the budding flame of his trust.

But embers still glow amongst the ashes. The child listens with rapt attention to the mares as they speak, drawn in spite of everything to the tones that soothe the raw parts of him and wrap him in warmth. Deep down, in the basest, most primal recesses of his battered heart, he wants to belong... to be held, and cherished, and cared for the same as any other. It’s just…

His gaze drifts to the spotted mare, wary. Though flecked with white, the rich ruby-red of her coat reminds him so much of her. He’d gotten lucky the last time, narrowly escaping the towering inferno of his dam’s rage with naught but singed fur and soot.

He can’t let it happen again. Vulnerable as he is, he won’t survive it. If he is to take the love that is offered to him, he will choose it himself, at his own pace, when he is certain the hand that feeds won’t snatch him by the throat.

The pearly woman’s thick accent draws his attention back. He looks at her: she, too, has a noticeable splotch of burgundy marring her salt-damp hide, a fireball burning a hole through flawless white canvas, and his eyes linger on it before darting quickly away, as if it hurts to stare too long. Behind her stands a third mare, cloaked in a velvety darkness the likes of which he’d never seen, with ears that curved towards each other, the tips forming a halo above her white-masked head. Once he’s found her, he can’t look away. She is nothing like his dam. She looks like an angel.

He finds himself mobile again, driven forward by awe. The boy skirts around the others, rounding them until he reaches the dark mare’s unoccupied side, and though he instinctively champs his teeth he reaches for her boldly, bumping his small nose against her withers. It’s a risk, placing this trust in her; but so is the spotted mare, and he had been burned by someone like her in ways that he hadn’t from the bald-faced woman. Still...

His gaze flicks between the two. The scent of mare’s milk pulls him back, but the one memory he has is so strong in his mind, he can’t see past it. Perhaps - with time, and patience, and the angel’s steady guidance - he’d be able to bridge that gap.