Her struggle to breath, the thick air that forces her to gasp for air, is that what wakes her. Slowly she blinks her eyes a few times, trying to clear her sight, as she forces herself to sit up. Her body is unwilling to cooperate and the simple task to sit up makes her breathless. She needs time to catch her breath, still down but now at least sitting up. Her front legs are folded under her body, her hind legs too, but a bit more to the left as her right side carries most of her weight. Every breath is a fight, loud and with visible moving sides as her body expands to take more air.

In this pose of resting, though a little voice in her head urges her to get up, her lips are touching the ground. The earthy smell is familiar, but that’s the only thing of this world that she recognizes. With each blink of her eyes, her view gets more and more clear. It encourages her enough to lift her head to look around, even though it is hard. Diorae lifts her heavy head, tongue slipping past her lips to wet them. The tastes the earth, sand from the ground where she had rested. Not all that appealing, but her mind is too busy with other things right now.

It’s dark, so much darker than she’d ever seen. Something not of this world. Or is it? She hadn’t been back in Beqanna long enough to be familiar with the chances the land had gone through. But even in the dark, she can now see further than she’d ever been able to. Sharper too, even in the dark. Even on a bright day her sight had never been this good. How had she gotten here?

Last things she remembers is the field, or the meadow perhaps. Diorae didn’t have a home, nor family to return to or friends to lean on. She had been alone, both nervous and thrilled about the thought that someone might be coming to get her. All she wanted was someone to lean on to, to show her all the good things she didn’t dare to go looking for alone. Clearly someone – or something – had come for her, had collected her, but not quite in the way she’d hoped.

She would’ve grunted while standing up if she had been able too, if only her vocal cords and throat would’ve been able to produce sounds. But she cannot. And thus she rises with a struggle in the eerie silence. By the time she stands, she’s panting. Her own breath is the only thing Diorae hears. Nothing moves either. No wind rustling the leaves of the forest in front of her, or tugging at her pale mane and tail. It only makes the whole situation more strange, and freightning.

With realisation settling in, Diorae shifts a bit uneasy on her legs. From her now standing position it’s much easier to look around and, finally noticing the towering mountain in the west. But that’s not the thing that catches her attention. The smoke that rises from it – dark clouds of ashes against an equally as dark sky, which she miraculously can see – is moving, moving. Unless anything else in this strange world.

A snarl breaks through the silence.

She doesn’t freeze, doesn’t even turn to look around, and instead she starts moving. The mountain, she had to get to the mountain. Something was still moving there, making it much more appealing that the dark, frozen forest in front of her. But, dear lord, moving is hard. The fear is enough motivation to do so though, and thus Diorae sets of to the mountain, a quick trot asking less of her energy than canter would’ve.