together we can burn so bright,
She wakes on a rocky shore, saltwater clinging to her mane, shivering in the wind. It is night and the tide has receded, leaving wet rock behind that is encrusted with barnacles and draped with pieces of kelp that glisten in the starlight. Her legs shake as she lifts herself to her hooves. Unknowingly, she sways. The rocks blur and split before merging once more, and then blur again. She blinks hard, becoming aware of a dull aching pain in her head that only increases in intensity.

It is cold.
The next thing she knows, she is picking her way slowly through a sparse pine forest. The trees are young and thin. Their needles are dusted with snow. How much time passed in the space of a blink? Her hooves seem to be moving of her own accord, which is just as well, because everything feels so frozen and stiff that she might stumble if she put a little more thought into moving her muscles.

A fallen branch breaks underhoof and, inexplicably, she stops. Looks at the two splintered pieces with a sort of wonder. What is she doing? Why was she walking just now? What does she seek? Is she taking herself somewhere that will be... less cold? That seems impossible, just by walking. She still can't stop shivering. A wind blows through the forest and chills several places in particular, but the spot on the back of her head, half-hidden by her mane, is the most annoying. The mare didn't realize it before, but those several spots felt warmer just seconds ago. Now that warmth is rapidly departing, and the wind makes them feel colder. (To an onlooker, the warm places manifest as scrapes and cuts, from which a dark liquid has mostly ceased to ooze. To the mare, their pain is hidden beneath the all-consuming, bone-deep ache of the cold.)

She takes a few more steps, then stops again. She can't think past the shivers that wrack her body. If she closes her eyes her eyeballs feel less cold and the wind does not sting with its harsh dryness, so she does that. Then she lowers herself to the white-dusted bed of pine needles beneath her and shivers next to the slender trunk of a tree. She has been standing up for long enough, she thinks. The sound of her heartbeat echoes through her mind and becomes all she can focus on. One quiet ba-bump after another. She is tired.

that we'll chase the shadows from the world