By the time Caster reached the meadow, the mist had swallowed the path behind him. A grey veil draped against the viridian plainness of trees, of leaf, of grass. His steady hoofsteps pressed neatly into the soft, rain-soaked earth, each beat leaving a mark in its wake as the blades brushed wet against his fetlocks. 

A quiet calm settled against his ears, interrupted sparingly by birdcalls, each more beckoning than the next with a sense of inquiry. Possibility held him still. The prickly feeling of ghostly whispers in the early morning air clung to him with a strange familiarity, reminding him of something, someone he couldn’t fully recall. Caster could not have said whether he hoped the mist would give someone back to him, or keep them hidden a little longer. He’d been here before, of course he had, and yet, a sense of exactly here unfurled itself against the softest portions of his thoughts.

October was soon to usher away September's warmth, and the rustle of leaves would replace this entrancing hush before he knew it.

For all the meadow’s quiet, he could not help but let his mind wander, ears flicking, tail following with a lazy swish. Caster had nearly been lulled into listening for something, and it was the sudden absence of birdsong that drew his attention with sharpness. The monochromatic pendulum of his tail stilled. Somewhere beyond the mist, something had disturbed the treeline. Caster turned an ear toward it and waited.

Somewhere beyond the mist, something had disturbed the treeline. Caster turned an ear toward it and waited.

The bold black and white paint waited, listening and watching. Even the mist added a certain subtle backdrop to the grayscale of his flashy coloring, and how now was it that it appeared to thicken in some areas? He was here for a reason, was he not? Pulled towards the meadow, with the nagging feeling of needing to be here. At this moment, perhaps even, at this very place where he remained a statuette in solitude.

Until he wasn’t.

It was now that the memory of this place uncoiled from his thoughts, unstringing itself like a thin silver chain. He’d been here before with his Father, although the memory was muddled and grey, the same texture of the overcast skies, and murky haze that clung to the tree line. Such a remembrance is soon snuffed like a candle, though the circumstance with which it faltered left him more intrigued with the presence that approached.

Her gray coat isn't a familiar one, not in the way he had come to know familiarity, but the bearing she commanded was no less muted. “I suppose I am,” he nods, blue eyes withdrawing from the line of trees and settling themselves upon his present company.

Caster takes a moment, looking over her stone hued shape with careful consideration until his pale face guides his topaz stare to greet her glowing gaze. He flicks an ear to an unasked question, and takes a prolonged note of the fog that treads so gently across her form.

It held on, clinging against her, much the same way as the mist persisted to cover the grassy meadow. He wondered how, of course he did, but he left the riddles to the gentle space their quiet left each other in. For a time, the weight of their meeting was held by the pronunciation of their breathing, and the gentle wave of his blackened tail - but mostly it was cradled by the perception of who he is, and affirmation of who she was.

”Do you sometimes wonder where they’ve all gone?” He doesn’t need to say who, because with a land that was spread so thin, how could anyone not notice the absence? Nor does he allude to the what, because like a memory, the absence disjoined his understanding.

Along the stretch of misty meadow stood a man that waited, and somehow, he’d gained a companion for his hour of contemplation.

His memories of what was have left him wanting; they’ve left him without direction and still, he waits for them to unfold without forcing them back. Memories moving like the mist— the more he tried to catch them, to reach them and touch them, the more they slipped through his fingers and disappeared altogether.

And yet, it is her words that stir him more than the absence of his purpose, the recollection of darkness and death.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much one may wish to forget something, and he draws his pale face towards her own graphite profile, flicking his ears uncertainly and seeking a soothing breath before he admits his worry at all.

”That’s what I’m afraid of,” he doesn’t even give himself a moment to still the words, no, they slip through his fingers as easily as the memories do. Ladled with uncertainty and worry, they ebb past his whiskers and join the haze that has, for now, bewitched him. Even his body is caught by the tension her words ushered against his nerves, or was it his own that made him so unsettled?

Once more he lets the silence take him, working through his thoughts, his troubles in solitude, as he has been left to do. The time snatched away from him, just like the pieces of his puzzle had been, because it is only now that he allows himself to relent the words that caught on his tongue.

”I think my family was lost in that darkness,” and when he gives her that morsel of his grief, his eyes follow suit with a melancholy sadness…trapped in the gemstone facets of his gaze.

Who were they?

Were.

And he doesn't enjoy the finality of that word, because they're not truly gone are they? It nestles itself against him in all the wrong places, digging into his very bones because somehow it had breached the sanctity of his soul.

It’s not even her fault, no, her words are innocent questions. No, the problematic portion of the conversation came from his own mind, the way his thoughts extracted that singular word and tore it apart until it was he who was left bare, and broken. There’s hurt in his eyes, but he doesn’t turn the pain he feels on her, no, yet the evidence is an open wound that looks back at her before he finds the words to respond.

”My Mother,” he begins, though he isn’t certain why the list begins there, but he knows that her face was among the last he’d seen.

”My brothers,” their faces are less clear, though they ripple through his memory the way rain touches water, spherical patterns ebbing away from him quicker than he can find his grip.

’Is it them you’re waiting for?’

His heart nearly skips a beat before it sinks into the very pit of his stomach, dropping below the safety of his ribcage until it was left with the acid of his stomach. He might be sick.

”I didn’t wait for them,” the words are hollow, and severe. Scraping themselves against his tongue like a sticker patch. Were his legs shaking? No, but his limbs felt weak as the weight of his admission dropped like an anvil where he stood.

For a time, he’s stuck, attached to the ground so completely that it’s difficult to gain leverage to move. Heavy legs that root him, and refuse to take seed so that he could simply remain there forever.

His uncertainty would serve as his marker when the dreadful passing of time, the rejecting earth, and the careless wind had had their fill of him.

The meadow takes a round of long breaths, or was it the tobiano who slowed his breathing? Accommodating his internal demons and self-soothing whatever turmoil explicitly found him. Even still, he found he wasn’t as alone as he had come to believe. A featherlight presence coaxes its way towards him, slowly nearing as he stiffened once, twice, before relaxing with a great inhale of air preceding his recaptured calm. He blinked once at her face, uncertain of her purpose, then his azure eyes glinted at the fog.

It draped itself across his hooves, before it coiled gently around his heels and sought his calf soon after.

”You brought the mist?” The question leaves his lips as softly as the fog clings, a single ear rotating towards her proximity, his eyes daring for another glance before another heartbreaking sound unbound his relief.

’Would they have waited for you?’

”I don’t know,” desperately he squints his eyes, narrowing his vision to emulate the way his emotions felt caged. ”She told me to run,” and so he did. Maybe they wouldn’t have waited for him to come back the way that he had, maybe the worst befell them that day, maybe it didn’t even matter. He gave her the words anyways, as though he sought to justify his actions to her—but maybe to himself.

”Does anyone wait for you?”