Alone again, as I always seem to be.
The sky’s still dark. Hasn’t changed for weeks. You’d think I wouldn’t fly at a time like this, but I’m not worried about smacking into mountains or trees. Not from this high up. I’m not even worried about meeting another horse along the way; the apocalypse had done a pretty good job of scaring mediocre flyers right out of the sky.

I thought it was weird enough how everything had started to rapidly adapt to the end times. Wild animals and the weather had been acting out of turn, probably just as confused as the rest of us. Beqanna though… it seemed like the intersected moon and sun had woken up the freaks. This was their time to shine - when it was darkest, and I smiled to myself at the thought, flapping my wings to soar through a bloodred cloud. It looked like a bloody sunset everywhere, the world drenched in black and crimson. The end that never came; a weird reminder that hope couldn’t be found on any coming horizon.

There wouldn’t be a tomorrow. We were all stuck in the eternal present, and I liked to think of myself as the freakiest of all to be so at home here.

But I was getting tired. Tired of flying, that is. I’d been travelling often lately, moving from one location to the next without settling down for much longer than a few nights. Thanks to my b*tch of a mother for displacing me and disowning me, I was a hapless b*stard nomad. I couldn’t just charm my way out of destitution like I’d done when I’d been an orphan. Cute smiles didn’t work with my jagged, arrogant mouth anymore. I didn’t have it in me.

I only had a few moments to land. My shoulders already felt numb and my wings were heavy as rocks on my back. Teetering down from the sky, I circled haphazardly in search of a quiet place to spend a night dead on my hooves, already irritated that the closest nearby cover was a forest. Great, I thought, more woods. I didn’t have a choice, though. The weather fouled like my mood, darkening before bursting out into rain, and I soggily landed among the trees and their quiet secrets.

I’d barely touched down before the strangeness set in.
Should’ve expected it, being in these woods. The forests of Beqanna never were my kind of place, felt like being in a prison all the time. Not that I had anything against trees - they were alright as far as living things went. I just hated the way they crowded in on a horse, made them feel… claustrophobic. I shrugged; useless to get upset over nothing. I was wet and tired, that was all. Needed a good night’s sleep and a plan. Nothing good ever happened when I was irritable and tired.

At least the rain wasn’t so bad down here. I’d torn a hole in the branches descending and let a bit of the worst weather in, but I wasn’t intending on staying in this spot. That was how you got targeted, and I didn’t need someone else’s blood on my conscience right before a long rest. Best to be moving until a secure location revealed itself, and in the meantime I kept myself occupied by picking out twigs from my wings.

There wasn’t much else to see. This place was a dump - overgrown and eerily quiet. Most of the native trees looked alike. They tended to have pale bark, contrasted like sentinel ghosts against the day-dark. I thought I was moving quietly enough for a Pegasus, winding between them and keeping an ear out for trouble, (one way or another we’d find each other again) but how quiet could I really be? I was an outsider; we had a way about ourselves that hinted at our wrongness. Those who belonged somewhere always seemed capable of sniffing it out.

Except this time, I heard the phantom gait that didn’t match time with my own.
Drifting off into the shadows, I listened to the high-pitched voice of the horse who’d been following me. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying as I travelled upwind and then doubled back, but the sound faded and then rose again: they weren’t moving anymore. I could’ve probably left right then and gotten away clean, just not by flight. Would’ve been easier, simpler.

I don’t like simple things.

So I doubled back to get a look at whatever was keeping me from my rest, chuckling under my breath to find a little kidd tailing me in the big dark woods. What a joke. I wasn’t about to let this little ant run me out of a good R&R situation.

“You like trailing after strangers in the woods, pest?” I strode out from the shadows, on the opposite side from where I’d been when she first lost track of me. There was little light to see by, and I was already muddy and unkempt from constant travel, but somehow the black on my skin was writhing, alive with activity like a trick on the eyes. Under the grime and grit it moved, spreading out in strange patterns to cover my face until the only thing that stood out under the black tangle were the orange reflections in my eyes. “Don’t you know what happens to little fillies when they stray too far from mommy’s side?”

Not a few hours in and I somehow manage to find a tick. A little filly, one who didn’t know how big mouths asked for bigger trouble, and who was starting to get on my nerves. The rain might’ve been coming down gently but it was still coming down, steadily soaking my wings and dragging my hair into my eyes, and the last thing I wanted was to hear snarky responses like ‘we don’t have strangers here’. Which, what even was that? She reminded me of some rejected foal from my den days - a weird one who always stood alone at the fringes and watched the others play, useless and pathetically sad.

That made me feel less-conflicted about using magic against her.
I did love the sensation of my power, the way it built up inside of me as a natural charge. Whether it was in the air or in my blood, I could always feel it around me. Magic as present and real as breathing, flowing through me and all around us. The telltale sign of it was on my skin and in my glare. Spiders would crawl out from the black points on my coat, invisible in the dark, and spin their webs over my golden fur in a frenzied panic. I would glare at my target: the little filly in this instance. Then I’d ask her a question, maybe distract her somehow, right before…

I blinked.
They meet rude boys? That’s what she thought happened to babies who wandered away from their mum?

She really was a little tick, wasn’t she? A regular parasite. I threw my head up and barked out a laugh, severing my connection with the magic that surely would’ve proven her theory to be lacking in all the most horrible ways, and then sneered back down at the ballsy female. Mares. They were always the same, big or small. “Very clever.” I complimented her. Poor kidd probably didn’t get many of those. With a flick of my tail I turned my back to her and shuffled off again, unbothered if she chose to follow or not. I had bigger problems, and whoever she was it was clear to me that she was less than a threat to my livelihood.

See, I knew she was an insect soon as I could make out the sound of her trailing me further into the dark woods. What sort of creature defies logic, rolling ever forward toward death with little stops in between? A bug, that’s what. When I was a kidd I used to like the sound their hard exoskeletons made when I crunched them underneath my hooves. I wondered, idly, if her tiny child bones would make a similar-sounding noise when crushed under the weight of a nearly-grown stallion. That made me smile to myself; that, and the idea she was left staring at my wide ass in the dark.

“Oh you’re warning me now, are you?” I mocked her laughingly, flicking my ears as if to flick away the pesky sound of her voice. How lonely was this pathetic thing, to follow around some horse who’d rather treat her like a dog? And yet, what she said did settle uncomfortably in my thoughts, if not on my face. I had literally no idea what could be out here. Being on the ground was bad enough, stuck in this muck weather and under tight treeline cover? Possibly the worst-case scenario I could find myself in.

I really hated the idea, but having a tick stuck to me was better than a monster.

“I think I can handle myself just fine, but thanks anyways.” I stopped walking and looked up, around, not really interested enough to sound especially cruel. I was looking for a specific type of place to hide out for the night, a tight little area or maybe somewhere beneath an overhanging boulder, close to water. Somewhere I could keep my back guarded, but the trees here were all the same. The kinds I had grown used to varied by location, giving away little hints about where to find what I was looking for. Not so, here.

“Hey you know what?” I said abruptly, turning. Had she been saying something? Too bad if she was, I hadn’t really been paying attention. Or caring at all. My wings swooshed at my sides before settling again, and I needled her little obtuse shape in the dark with my eyes, smiling. I mean, was there really a need for her to feel so… blue? Why should she, when I could do the opposite? Give her a small gift, maybe...

I stepped toward her, lowering my nose to her level, and felt radiantly bemused at having her around. If she was receptive, there was a good chance she might feel it too: the happiness that almost seemed to make the air feel warmer, your hooves feel lighter, make a heart soar. I found giving it to others made them more… complacent to my wishes, when I had them.

“You should show me where you like to hide, you know—when you need to be careful. Because that’s what I need right now, and I think you’re the perfect filly to help.” I grinned in the night, poised and ready. Ready for what? Well, that all depended on her answer, now didn’t it?

Fuck. This is what I deserve for getting myself into entanglements with little shit-for-brain foals. I’d expected that eventually the mother of the little whelp I was trying to squeeze information out of would appear, and behold my ability to see the future: she does. At the exact moment I’m trying to pied-piper her kid. Not the best standing for me to weasel my way out of, but I’m quick to lift my head and bury my ears into the dark tangle of my mane anyways with a snort. The little insect looks like she’s about to jump out of her skin and it doesn’t take me long to see why.

Her mother is… well, how do I put this politely? Spawn of hell.

Yea, I could excuse her twit of a daughter because the filly was about to become an accomplice to my hiding undetected here, but now I’m kind of pissed that her presence has created the opposite effect. There’s no hiding the way her mother looks me over, like her eyes have claws and they’re raking my skin into little ribbons. I shiver though, and I try not to look into that reaction too deeply. Mares, always had to be mares.

And this one was wild, I could tell. Light played over skin and crackled with an eclectic pulse I could feel in the air, causing the spiders to recede back to the shadows on my body. They unwound their tangled webs and scurried off into the black points of my skin, and I sneered appreciatively at the way this female could at least back up her bulk shit-talking. The orange halo of color in my eyes disappeared as I blinked, and then it made its way to the obvious protrusion jutting out from her chest. Disgusting, I thought, screwing up my face, I thought I had issues.

“I’m Narcisus, and your little ray of sunshine there -” I tilted my chin toward the filly, “- started it. I need a place to rest and I don’t really care who owns these woods. I’m staying until I’m ready to go.” My own head rose along with the challenge. There was opportunity here, I could sense it, and I wasn’t the type to waste a moment. I still had the illusion saved for the little insect, but it had an equal chance of success with any horse who was slightly receptive: I let the power warp me and hoped that whatever a mare like Sabra was into, (another shudder tickled my spine at the thought) was what those piercing eyes of hers would see.