Meadow

At some point — she could not be entirely certain when — Sabah had stopped dreaming of her son. Within hours of this realization hitting her, the rain had started, and it had not stopped. That was days ago. If there ever was a clearer omen, Sabah had not encountered it. Should she give up? Was her son as good as dead to her? Was he actually dead? Her heart cried out in the negative, but her mind — and the universe — were telling her otherwise.

Meanwhile, the deluge had numbed her from the inside-out. The leaves had only just begun to turn, but the rain was ripping them from their perches prematurely, smothering the ground with a sodden blanket of muted green and gold. Between bouts of shivers and itching from the damp, Sabah's bronze-and-white coat twitched almost constantly, and her tail flicked at flies that were not there. She spent most of her time huddled against the trunks of trees, but even they could not completely shelter her, and occasionally she would swear beneath her breath and march aimlessly to rid her legs of their accumulated restlessness.

She was on one such march — with half a goal to find better shelter — when a cry came from the open meadow. Halting in her tracks, Sabah blew softly with alarm, and twitched her ears toward the sound. Through the trees and the torrential rain she could make out the form of a horse on the ground in a sea of brown. As Sabah watched, the horse struggled but did not rise. Breaking through the trees and coming nearer revealed that the meadow had become one huge mud pit, and it was this pit that had trapped the stranger: a mare who seemed strangely familiar.

Sabah stood awkwardly at the edge of the mud, blinking against the rain as she appraised the situation. She could not see an easy way to offer assistance without getting stuck herself. "How can I help?" she asked, raising her voice a little to be heard above the hammering of the deluge.