Meadow

"Daddy!" She called out to him in his dream, playfully twisting and writhing before him as they raced along familiar paths. There was no fear on her face here in dream-land, only happiness, and he relished in it. He wanted so desperately to believe it was real, that the reality - of her being gone, of his culpability, of the aching loneliness in his heart - was all fake, but he knew better. And as if the remembrance of the waking world was an omen, his precious girl raced faster, charging ahead with reckless abandon, already far beyond his ability to slow or stop her. He watched as she rushed toward certain doom, painfully aware of how helpless he was to stop it.

He awoke with a start, gasping for air in the bitter winter cold. The movement dislodged most of the snow that had gathered on his thin coat through the night, exposing patches of sweat and snowmelt that had crept through his coat, all the way down to his skin. Taurus shivered and levered himself upright with a miserable groan, wishing - not for the first time - that the world would hurry up and swallow him already.

The day was already painfully bright here with dawn's early light glittering across the packed snow and sending daggers beaming into his bleary eyes. He couldn't remember what he'd hoped to gain in choosing to overwinter on the Crossing instead of in the Hills where he belonged, but he sorely regretted his choice now. He had never been a creature built for the cold, and a few meager weeks of autumn had not been enough to prepare his fair-weather build for snow and ice. Even so, he was too embarrassed to return home to Marcelline and risk her asking why he'd left at all. Somehow, admitting that the attentions of a mare (no matter how false he believed them to be) had scared him off was worse than just avoiding the interaction altogether.

The golden stallion rose to his feet and squinted out at the open area before him. It seemed like a few creatures were stirring, but they were thankfully neither the red-spotted coat of his queen nor the black and white patchwork of the mare he was avoiding. He doubted either of them would come to seek him out, but he also knew that his luck was terrible and that fate wouldn't miss an opportunity to put him down.

Satisfied he was not being pursued, he peered down at the small ring in which he'd lain for a long moment, trying to decide if it was worth it to try and eat the sweat-stained grass that was already uncovered. Somehow the thought of going out into that blinding-white blur of a meadow, just to have to scrape away at the snow seemed even less appetizing than eating the body-warmed grass he'd just uncovered.