//------------------------------//
// Hawkeye - Snow I 
// Story: Gods 
// by TheTimeSword 
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Branches hung low, dragged down by snow that clung in massive clumps. Clouds had darkened the frozen land, turning the whole world a grey that resonated deep inside. There was no wind, for once. It made it easier to walk within the compacted snow, the lack of cold batting at the face. It also forced a slowness, every step making a crunch and crackle that could alert the unseen. 

Without the leaves, the forest was far less intruding one's vision. The unseen could not lurk behind the aged trunks of the barren wood. It was the hills that slumped and protruded among the thicket that granted a far worse unease. Climbing the knolls would prove a useful tool to those that wish to scout the wilderness. Gaining an eye for an enemy, landmark, or being was essential to survival. Sometimes, regardless of how much caution ingrained itself into memory, life found its end.

The elements could freeze someone, putting them in the deepest of sleep that they could not awake. A disease, brought on by the simplest of cuts, could plunge a mare or stallion into the life after life, leaving behind those that loved them so. It was far more rare to see the unseen. To have them come down from the sky, to lurch them from their cave, to writhe their wrath from the water's depth. 

Nevertheless, caution should be the top priority for anyone who still drew breath - for anyone who still had loved ones. 

In a season of snow, evenfall came far quicker than during the summertime. The most cautious of ponies were smart to hide within their earthen shelters, devouring the remains of warmer crops and the cold root vegetables. Darkness shrouded the land more often than the light, preventing those that could scout from doing so.

But the darkness did not matter for the unseen. Those beings could see whether the sky had grown black or the sun sat centered. Only the remnants of kin did the darkness mistreat; blindness or beacon. To be blind, a dangerous concept that could prove fatal when facing a cliff, or to be a beacon, with the ability to see and be seen.

Windless days with skies either clouded or open, those were the days that every mare or stallion pined for. Scouts would be out, trailing the perimeter of the cavern that was called home to the remnants of kin. Fillies and colts could play in the snow without worry while the elders did laundry, applying the filth that hid the clan from the unseen. It granted a reprieve from the burden of silence that had been mandatory within the depths of the earth. It was taboo to speak during the night or whenever scouts were within. Voices carried further than one might expect.

Of course, speaking only mattered to the remnants of kin, and now there was only one. They had no one to talk to, and talking to one's self was rather pointless - especially when the crunch of snow beneath one's hooves provided plenty of noise. 

For the last of the remnants of kin, the mare who was alone in a world full of unseen, caution was not something she valued. Survival was hard enough without the constant worry of threats, though this was not her reasoning. If danger came, then it came, and she knew the end would too. The life after life would begin, and she would be the last of the remnants no longer.

Though her pessimism pushed for an end, her discipline held more tightly, aching for shelter of the old. Caves and hobbles within snowy cliffs were far too dangerous, for the unseen could be unseen within. The mare needed the anathema of the kin, the remains of the ages lost.

They were always dilapidated, but it did not matter. The unseen often steered clear as they knew no kin now lived in such places, they had seen to that an era ago. And though the remnants of kin understood this, it was forbidden to venture into such areas. They were cursed, these terrifying ruins. The ponies of the past had called on the unseen and the unseen had taken everything from them, and so the remnants of kin would not follow such a terrible history.

But for the mare who was the last of the remnants of kin, taboos no longer mattered. She would go to where the unseen were not. She would hide from them, those vile creatures. Those gods.