A Foreign Sun

For what could've been an easy night, maybe even a peaceful night, it literally couldn't have been worse. Nightmares had haunted her, biting at her end legs, no matter how hard she tried to run from them. But even though she fought it, she knew that there was no running from a piece of yourself. A torn piece, a broken piece. A piece that had even less life left than the ashes of the lands she once called her home.

The night before was probably the whole thread on which it started off. At the end of the day, while the sun was slowly setting and everyone got ready for the evening to fall and the night to consume all the light that was left, a young filly was brought in. She had wounds over her back, big scratches carved deeply into her flesh. She was attacked by a grass beast, her mother told Maori, and they had rushed to the Medics as soon as they could. Without even thinking Maori started to try and heal the filly, make her more comfortable by easing her pain, and most of all trying to start the progress of healing the wounds. She had spend a full hour that evening, covering up the wounds with herbs that took away the pain and while she did, she softly spoke against the filly to make her more comfortable, since the poor thing was in a bit of a shock from the attack. At first it was all on the automatic pilot and she did what she was best at - helping others that were in need.

Once she was finally done, the little thing got back up her feet again and a smile arose back on her sweet, petite face. ''Thank you m'dam,'' the thing spoke to her, before nudging her soft, small muzzle against Maori's nose as a sign of gratitude. And at that moment, she froze. The filly left with her mother and she stood there alone. While the night first found as a cooling element, it now felt as if the darkness wanted to consume her, wanted to catch her and never let her go again. Shivers shot over her back and cooled her body down to ice. But stubborn as she was, she tried to shake it off by shaking her head and turning around, making her body come into movement so that she could make her way to the weeping tree that she claimed as her sleeping place. Everything will be fine, she tried telling herself. Everything will be fine.

...but if she knew what would've come for her when she had closed her eyes that night, she would've never let the sleep take away her consciousness.

She awoke again screaming at the top of her lungs, but at the same time she made no noise at all. Her body was all wet from the sweat that dripped over her coat and her heart beat so fast it felt like it could knock out of her chest at any moment. It took her a few minutes to calm back down, come back to her senses, trying to regulate her breath again. It was only than when she realized the morning had already arrived. It was still early, seeing that the crisp fog lingered over the lands. She could hear the company from horses, which told her her herd mates were only twenty, maybe thirty feet away. But while she normally would've liked the feeling of not being alone, she right now wouldn't care less where her herd mates were. All that she could care for was that the horrid memory of her love, of her stillborn filly, would've been just only a nightmare.

Trying to forget about the cursed memory she started walking away from the voices she heard in a distance, not even caring which way she was heading. Better to not care even, because it was so foggy that she could only see maybe a meter in front of her. The lack of sight made her fall back into her thinking again and before she could see him she already bounced against him. She flickered with her eyes and recognized the muscle of a stallion that was quite bigger than her. But she was too embarrassed to recognize which particular stallion she had bumped into. ''I'm so, so sorry! That cursed fog made me blind,'' she started apologizing to him.


[742 Words]