| Bergamot My silence is a roar...
The golden colored stallion picked his way almost mincingly through the spindly forms of giant pines, their needles tickling along his back and catching in the cream strands of his mane. The sky was dark overhead, a black void that sucked all of the color from the world. No moon rode in the sky tonight, the only light came from the starlight, their forms like tiny prickles of ice glinting in the velvety darkness. Hazel eyes well adjusted to the dark, Bergamot continued his slow trek through the trees until they thinned and he found himself in a large open space. Calling it a meadow would have been too polite. It was more like a bare patch on the slope that had managed to cover itself in a thin blanket of lichen and moss, stones protruding like the hands of drowning men.
The cold wonder of the Chamber had always intrigued the palomino stallion. It was so different from his birthplace in the Jungle. He might have chosen this land for his home if not for his singular talent, the one he feared to lose more than anything else. Typically a burnished gold, his pelt was currently illustrated with the night sky, he might have been a horse shaped piece of the galaxy fallen to earth. His paintings replaced his words, gave him a voice to speak with to replace the one he'd been born without. Still, there were limitations. His paintings were as silent as he was and could not call out for his father any more than he could himself.
Instead he lifted a single rear hoof and kicked a stone sharply, the sharp crack ringing out until the echo answered him back. He struck the stone twice more and waited in the dark, a breeze lifting up his mane and tail. From afar one would see a blackened Quarab stallion painted with a thousand stars, his age unreadable. Perhaps only three years old, his hazel eyes looked a hundred as he peered into the gloom that surrounded him. Though he was painted in light, he could not produce it. He would wait in the dark and see if his sire came.
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