because the world is on fire
tuck your innocence goodnight
you sold your friends like guns for hire
-
(mare. draft x. gold champagne. nyctophobic.)
The silver-gold mare turns to stone in the night.
The adventure had been fun, at first. Coddled for months beneath the bright skies of the Hills, with its shadows few and far between even at night, Daybreak had overestimated herself. She forgets the paralysis of the darkness, how stiff and sore she is once thawed by the rising sun, how exhausted and achy the following day. In the Hills, she spends her nights next to the watering hole, the moon and stars spilling generous light across the sandy banks and reflecting off the water’s surface. It’s as bright as you could hope for. At least, bright enough not to freeze Day where she stands.
But here…
She had forgotten the depths of the shadows in the jungle where she was born. It’s not quite that dark here, in the forest where the leaves have mostly fallen, and the snow reflects some light, but it is so much darker than the Hills. The sky is choked with branches, blotted out by remaining leaves and the Peak in the distance. The horizon all around her stretches upwards, suffocating, casting shadows.
The sun sinks slowly, but Daybreak is frozen, her panic gluing her to the ground between the trees, watching as her world is swallowed in shadow.
It’s not clear how much time passes. Part of her spaces out a bit, goes somewhere else while her heart hammers in the static cage of her ribs. The sounds of wildlife — of the wolves, the fox, the dying rabbit — are drowned beneath her fear of the dark. It’s only when a figure passes by, bright as the moon itself, that Daybreak’s trance of terror is broken.
It’s a filly, not even a yearling, her fur ghostly pale across her narrow, lanky body. Daybreak gasps softly, finding that she can move if she only focuses on the child, her pale green eyes drinking in the moonlight glow on her coat with a parched desperation. As the girl reaches down to inspect something, the pale mare takes a shaky few steps forward, until she thinks she might topple over if she continues. The filly is only a few steps away, focused on something, but Daybreak dares not tear her gaze away.
“Are… you a ghost?” she asks softly, not sure what else to say. The silver-gold mare is barely a child anymore, but her experiences with life are severely limited, and she still possesses the naïveté of youth. She only knows it would be rude to stand in silence, staring, and she is desperate for the pale filly to stay close enough to see.