After spending so long walking--so long trudging--so long crawling, she was fed up. So, very fed up. But then things had to get worse. How? Noon-Eye had looked up at the bleached-white and washed-out sky... and noted that it was beginning to rain. Rain heavily, thickly; big, fat drops that left marks on her dull coat, which hung listless from her angular and wasted body.

To the left, the rock vanished, disappearing down into a dark wasteland that she could hardly bear to look at; jagged rocks below and all around. To the right, the cliff continued winding upwards. How had she ended up here? Now she couldn't turn back. It was too narrow for that. Her amber eyes dully saw the dark clouds building in the sky, angry and towering.

Balefully looking around, head swinging, she noticed a small crevice in the wall; a cave of some sort. Her ears, slowly, rose. Luck wasn't something that she had had in a long time, and now... well, perhaps all of those years of bad luck were being paid back.

Like this.

So, a little more compensation would have been welcome. But perhaps it was a sign--an omen--that her fortunes were changing. Perhaps this would be the place that would allow her a home, friends, family... connection with others like which she had never dreamed...

With all due caution, she approached the cave, ears alert, eyes rolling and scanning for any sign of danger. She could see none... but you could never be too careful. Noon always made a big show out of being careful, and as she looked into the depths of the cave, she felt unease beginning to stir within her. But she told herself she was being silly. What could possibly be wrong with this place?

Hooves striking rock as she walked in from the rain, she tossed her head to dislodge the raindrops and clopped further in, though she paused once she was inside and, again, listened. She could scent that horses had been here before; oh, so many horses. And something else. Something else that was not helping with the disquiet building in her gut. But there was nothing she could do now.

Picking up a frail front hoof, she walked further into the cave, intent on staying out of sight until the unexpected rainfall ended.

Dead would be a good way to describe Noon-Eye; though in the stallion’s paradoxial world of opposites, dead meant alive, Noon-Eye was not in good condition. As she walked deeper into the cave—the damp disguising the scent of the large stallion that called the place home—her ears flickered, and she pawed the ground for a moment before continuing through the cave, alert... or as alert as a mare could be when so tired, lost, hungry and scared as she was. Thunder rumbled and the storm raged on, but it bothered her not; she had other things to worry about.

Her skin clung to her skeleton, her ribs showing clearly, starved for so long had this mare been. A coat that used to be a glossy golden dun was now faded and dull and scruffy, her black fringe coming down almost over her pallid face, amber eyes lifeless as she searched through the small scrap of shelter that she had managed to discover. Before, she had thought it to be luck—but soon she would discover that lucky things did not happen to lonely, deprived and poor little souls like herself. Brittle bones creaked with every step, as she searched for a play to rest her head, just for a moment; though sleep seemed impossible in the storm and thunder that was making the cliffs shake and growl.

Wound-down weariness gave way to a flash of panic, white hot—like steel in a furnace—burning down her stomach, twisting her intestines into a knot of terror, as she heard the fearsome roar that bounced and rolled around the cave that she now occupied, unknowing of the brute that lived there. Her long tail swished once, and even this tiny movement seemed to take up a lot of her energy; her large, scared eyes on her bony face immediately went to the front of the cave, where she saw the stallion pushing through the curtain of rainwater, emerging from the outside world like some terrible beast from another world; another hell.

Heart rate doubling, and then tripling, Noon-Eye stepped away from him, as if shielding her frangible, underfed, ghost-like form from his furious eyes. The joints on her hocks stand out on her legs as thin and bony as sticks, so underfed was she that she could barely carry herself, and the joints shook and jolted with the cold, and this new rush of adrenaline that pushed itself around her starved body. Some people see fatness as a scourge in another being; but this skeletal, corpse-like thinness was a terrible thing to see if you had an ounce of soul in your body... but this wasn’t guaranteed with the darkest of equines.

This stallion was strong; powerful, well-fed, and of course ready to lash her until she was stone dead. Noon’s eyes were empty of any emotion; she felt too numb, she had been travelling alone for too long to allow anything coming close to feeling to enter her mind for a long time now. She had been raised a ‘light’, but the lines between the alliances had mixed and blurred until they came to nothing any more. His deep words of dark fury made Noon quake, and she did not answer him until he had finished talking completely.

“I can’t remember,” she breathed, below a whisper, certainly below an ordinary speaking level, but in the dark caves, all outside sounds were muted, and it could be heard clearly, echoing and whispering across the walls uncannily; <i>can’t remember I remember can’t I remember can’t I remember...</i> Her eyes were wide and dinner plates and full of fear as she watched the steaming stallion before her.

It hit her only then that there was no such thing as good fortunes for a mare like her.