//------------------------------//
// Kirkwall - Welcome to The New World 
// Story: Northland 
// by Celefin 
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The Daily Mail on the counter in her (not actually hers, thank the maker) little convenience store was leading with 'QUEEN WIELDS PALACE JOB AXE'. It was also salivating over the 'Royal Shock! Harry's hottie CAN act'. A Prince's girlfriend caught on film while having a hand resting a little below her lap (on her leg actually, but with the right angle one could...).

Stuff like this would never go out of yellow publishing fashion. She wondered how many readers The Daily Mail would loose overnight if the Queen and her family ever just ceased to exist. Hoping for The Daily Mail to just cease to exist was probably a bit much to ask from the universe.

It was a good thing she also was staffing the tiny post office part of Mr. Muir's stuffy shop. Its desk was large enough to read newspapers on, even if she wasn't quite sure the rag before her counted as such. She'd already finished the Guardian's weekend edition fifteen minutes ago, around eleven. Also, her phone was broken. She had the distinct feeling that her brain was shrinking a little with each article she read, but it was still better than being terminally bored.

Maybe 'staffing' was too big a word, it wasn't as if there were enough customers, or space for that matter, to employ two people on the same shift. The calender on the wall read May 23rd 2015 and the real tourist season was still a week or two away. No steady stream of backpackers in need of Blue Dragon stirfry sauce (oyster variety especially, for some inexplicable reason) and cheap Chinese noodles yet. Not even 2for1 Tennent's.

At least there were a few confused 'normal' tourists every now and then who'd lost their way from the Highland Park distillery to St. Magnus Cathedral. Seriously.

The clock had crawled a little past twelve when she was startled from her Mail-induced trance. “Hello Brenda, how's it going? Not disappeared yet?” Timothy Muir was a nice fellow in his mid-fifties, thick grey hair and a permanently soft expression on his round face. He always wore minimalistic glasses on his broad nose that were as non-fitting in every sense of the word as humanly possible. She liked him.

“Nah, Sandy hasn't shown up yet. Always just makes it at the very last minute.” She sighed. Couldn't really blame her.

He was carrying a carton of Walker's salt & vinegar to refill the one that had finally run out. “I'll have a little word-.” As soon as he stepped close to her he scrunched up his nose and sneezed explosively. As a result he dropped the carton and frowned. “You wearing that thing again, aren't you?” he sniffled and took a step back before looking her over.

She facepalmed. “Sorry. I'll never learn that,” she exclaimed and looked down at the black, woollen sweater she'd already worn early this morning while looking after her Fjord pony Freya.

As usual, she'd almost stayed too long and had to hurry here. As usual, she'd forgotten to change out of the piece of clothing full of yellow tinted, off-white horse hairs that her boss was allergic to.

“Don't worry. As long as you pick up the stuff I drop because of you, you're forgiven.” He smiled in his fatherly way. “You know what, I'll cover for you until she gets here. Go grab some lunch, why don't you? See you tomorrow!”

“Thanks Tim!” she exclaimed and beamed at him before hurrying to pick up the packets of crisps so she could get out and back to the farm. Freya was due for some new horseshoes today and she might just fit one or two of them herself! The blacksmith was a good friend of hers and she'd helped him out a lot over the years, to the point of almost being his unofficial apprentice.

The set for her pony she'd even hammered herself and he'd approved of her work! She smiled to herself. Guess she was half blacksmith already... maybe her bachelor in equine sciences would pay off yet. Maybe she wouldn't have to work as a shop assistant for the rest of her life.

When she stepped out into the brilliant sunshine she realized she'd just made a decision. She'd start over, begin a real apprenticeship and make a living out of something she genuinely enjoyed. And who knew what that could lead to? Smiling to herself, she set out along the road that would take her past the distillery, out the southern part of town and towards her destiny!

She grinned at the melodrama.

Ten seconds later, somebody short-circuited the universe.





Her vision distorted and collapsed into blackness. The dark lit up with a flash of blue light that itself contracted to a single white horizontal line which winked out to a glimmer of static.

Slowly, it spun. A kind of gravity seemed to assert itself, along with the sudden feeling of vertigo. 

Distant lightning criss-crossed the darkness. 

Without warning, the line solidified again and came racing up towards her point of view, expanding until it filled her entire vision. The wall of white washed over her in a starburst of searing blue light.





Her vision refocused on cracked pavement overgrown with weeds and bushes and lined by dark walls. Heavy rain lashed her face and strong winds buffeted her immediately drenched body.

She gasped. Blinked. Small rivulets of water on the black surfaces ran red with a reflected glow coming from behind. She stared. Turned her head. Saw the crimson midnight sun sitting on the northern horizon, illuminating black and purple storm clouds from below.

Her breathing quickened when she looked back at where she'd just come from. Timothy Muir's little shop was a crumbling carcass with a crooked tree sprouting from where the shop window had been. His trusty 1988 Volvo still sat at the curb where he'd left it an hour ago, covered in litter and flaking rust. Only the chassis' distinct form made it even recognizable anymore. Her chest contracted and turned her breath into ragged gasps.

She started to run but tripped on the first step and hit the ground hard when she tried to catch her fall with hands she no longer had. The impact almost knocked her out, but the jolt of pain stopped her from hyperventilating and reset her brain. The quick to arrive metallic taste in her mouth did the rest.

With a pained groan she rolled onto her side and tried to sit up, but her forelegs refused to work that way.

Forelegs.

Forelegs still partly covered by her woollen sweater she'd torn with that frantic first step and subsequent fall. Well, one of the two was still covered. She lifted the one bare leg close to her face and studied it intently. The heavy raindrops still battering her she didn't even register anymore.

“Forearm, well muscled. Sturdy knee. Cannon on the short side. Very solid. Fetlock strong,” her voice was alternating between a hysterical giggle and clinical assessment. “Ergot hardly pronounced, pastern rather broad and short, could take a lot of strain. Coronet nothing special, hoof.”

She took a closer look. “Fine condition, perfect health and shape, sturdy, never been shod.” She regarded the equine leg with its dripping wet and dirty pale yellow fur for a long while. Then she crossed her eyes.

“Muzzle,” she stated flatly.

After rolling onto her belly she deliberated for a few moments. She tried to sit up with movements she suspected would be anatomically correct for her new joints. They were.

“Horse.”





She found shelter under a still intact half of a roof further down the road from where she'd arrived in... whatever it was. It still looked like Kirkwall. Kirkwall after the apocalypse.

Hadn't' she arrived in front of the little store, she wasn't sure if she'd have a clue as to where she was right now. Maybe the remains of one of the B&Bs situated further up the road that made their main business off of customers who'd spent a little too long at the distillery. The tasting sessions that followed the guided tours at the distillery could be rather demanding.

Huddled against the far wall, she began to take stock of her situation. A wet and freezing pony, going by her approximately Shetland-plus-a-little height, in an empty city. The cold was mitigated by two layers of too large and generally ill-fitting clothing of merino wool, on her front part at least.

Plenty of water, and food shouldn't be a problem if she was a true equine and not just looked like one. She wondered how grass would taste. It had to be around midsummer, so she wasn't in any danger of freezing to death and she had found a dry spot to wait out the storm. She wondered why she was being so calm.

She realized that she had much better hearing now and could discern what kind of surface the raindrops were actually hitting. The faint ploink of rusty cars, the quiet pit-pat of brick and asphalt and the ever-changing hiss and rustle of vegetation. They were the only sound apart from her own breathing and it was mesmerizing. It lulled her into a dreamless sleep, curled up on her little dry spot.

When she awoke next day, it took her a minute to remember yesterdays events. Carefully she rose to her hooves and tried to work out the stiffness in her joints while keeping her balance.

Common sense dictated she move out of the city to find something decent to eat since she was pretty sure what would be palatable to her new form. Stiff or bitter or acidic weeds and shrubs weren't in that category. She might just as well continue in the direction she'd wanted to go when she stepped out of the shop yesterday. Maybe she'd find another living creature down at the farm.

The sky had cleared and the sun shone down from a blue sky adorned with wispy clouds. The city looked exactly like an artist's impression of an end-times wasteland. It was something she'd often seen on a few of the artist tumblr blogs she followed. Endtimes stuff had always fascinated her. Funny that.

Like a twisted park about to loose its recognizability, the roads were more green than black with moss and weeds everywhere.  Small, crooked willow trees grew around little ponds formed by the build-up of litter in places the asphalt  was still intact. It had a strange beauty to it.

She stopped at one of the small pools to get a look at her reflection. Half an hour later she was still staring at the creature with its pale, smoky yellow coat, bright orange mane and ludicrously large eyes of a reddish brown colour.

The surreality was enhanced by the alien equine wearing a black t-shirt under a damaged black jumper that was missing the left sleeve.  The black leather trousers slung over the strange animal's back didn't help.

The latter would never fit again, but they were waterproof and the pockets contained all her remaining worldly possessions. Might as well keep them. She'd left her tight boots behind since those hadn't taken too well to being filled with hooves. Right now she probably wore the best 'footwear' she'd ever have anyway.

“Okay,” she said against the oppressive silence of the dead city. Her voice sounded higher pitched than before, but not unpleasantly so. Rather more melodic. “Get moving Brenda, this shouldn't be too hard. You've studied this stuff for years. That's first semester. No need to stumble around and trip over your own... hooves.”

If Freya could learn to walk a few yards on two hindlegs alone, Brenda could damn well learn to walk on four. Smoother ground would have been nice, but whatever. “Head this height. Balance. Uhm...”, she hesitated at the strange feeling on her head. “Ears forward in concentration? Thanks guys. Now lift that right hoof a little.” She took an apprehensive breath and swished her tail.

“Okay, here goes! Right hind. Right fore. Left hind. Left fore... woah! Back hoof into hoofprint of front hoof! Keep that four-beat you foal!” Foal? Whatever. Start over.

She tried to suppress the conscious part of her mind that insisted that this wasn't how one was supposed to walk. Opposed to that, a seemingly new and hard-wired part of her brain gave the impression of being delighted with the developments. A good fifty yards later the former threw up its hands in frustration and went to sulk in a corner.

“Hey, this is so cool!” She grinned while walking through her civilization's graveyard. “Alright! Trot! Two-beat!” A steady tchak-tchak-tchak-tchak announced her successful switch into the cross-diagonal gait and she whooped as she travelled past the desolate ruins at some exhilarating eight miles an hour.

She had to laugh at the mental image of how Freya might react to this display by her former owner. Give her two weeks and she'd be able to race her! She stopped short, broken road surface crunching under her hooves as an icy lump began to form in her chest and stomach. Freya. If no one was around apart from herself and time had moved on as far as it looked, Freya had died decades ago.

So had Tim. So had mum. So had everyone.

A soft wind played with her mane. Willow bushes swayed to its whistling that filled the peaceful streets. Unblemished blue sky free of contrails reflected in puddles on the sidewalk. Somewhere in the distance, a bird sang its song, clear and loud and with no traffic to drown it out. Her breathing quickened. The shallow ruins of the dead city drew close and loomed over her, mocking her cheerfulness from only moments ago.

Her ears strained to pick up anything that would hint at the presence of other people. There was the far away sound of metal creaking against rotting fixtures, nothing more. Empty windows leered at her and made her back up against the nearest wall. She jumped when her rump touched the brickwork and something scurried away on little feet. She began to shake.

Alone. The crumbling two storey house she stood below was impossibly high. Its entrance exceeded more than double her height. Parts of the dark grey wall still glistened where water had now seeped out for years and painted the bricks with algae and lichen. Lichen that would only thrive in the cleanest air. There was nothing to cause pollution anywhere nearby.

She would have clammy hands by now, but she was a little horse. A small, four legged creature in the vast emptiness that was her former home. Run. Anywhere but here. Small horses could break a cold sweat. A shriek pierced the air when a few crumbs of mortar fell from above. Her gallop ended after three yards when she got the rhythm wrong and stumbled over an old garbage bin.

The noise of the container bouncing away over cracked asphalt was deafening. It was followed by absolute silence, as all the birds stopped singing at the unexpected din. Now all she could hear was her own ragged breathing that gradually became sobs. There was no one to run to in an empty city. In an empty world.

Alone.





It was late in the afternoon when she finally lifted her head from the ground again. She took in her surroundings with dead, red-rimmed eyes that had shed all the tears they were able to shed hours ago. A rational corner of her mind, that didn't feel as if it belonged to herself entirely, insisted on finding shelter for the night.

Five minutes down the patchy road at a slow and stumbling walk, a feeling of wrongness crept up on her. As if something was out of a place. She stopped and scanned her surroundings for any sign of danger, yet there was none to be found, no matter how hard she concentrated. Just emptiness.

Then her eyes locked on to something that didn't fit into this place at all: a car with hardly any rust. Compared to the other wrecks she'd seen, the Skoda with an only slightly matted silver finish looked brand new. It had crashed into a large and rusted dumpster. Judging by the angle and damage to the left front wheel, it had veered off the corrugated road and rattled over the curb and pavement without braking.

The door on the driver's side was open and the upholstery on the front seat, though damp and grimy and full of animal hairs, wasn't decayed to any noteworthy degree. It couldn't have been sitting there for more than two years or so.

“Hello?” she called out. “Is anybody there?” The only answer was the faintest of echoes. Then she saw it: a cotton rag caught in some brambles growing up and over a nearby fence. The colour pattern on the piece of a former shirt was still visible. Someone had been here. Someone alive. Hope welled up in her as she scanned her surroundings again, this time for the most inviting shelter. “Hello?!” Silence.

'Rooms', declared a wooden sign behind a cracked window pane to her left. The B&B looked as if it had a dry reception area and promised comparatively comfortable shelter. Maybe he or she had set up a little base in there?

Four-legged movement had ceased to be fun that afternoon and she almost fell twice on her way to the door. Her tired, rational mind insisted that walking like this still was wrong and would not be told otherwise by some helpless animal. The second time she stumbled she caught herself with a swaying motion that ended with her catching all her weight on her right hindhoof. Something crunched and rattled in the long grass.

He was still wearing the shirt collar around his neck, just below the almost comical looking skull. Huge, forward pointing eye sockets and the muzzle that was too short for a normal pony left no doubt about his species. In contrast to herself though, a sharp horn protruded from his forehead. Along it, the stallion gazed up at her from his final resting place where he had died alone. The nose and one of the shin bones were broken.

She was still sitting on the pavement and staring numbly at the scattered bones before her when the day began to give way to a murky, silent night.





After a night of intermittent, fitful sleep she awoke to silence. It grated on her. She had loved being away from civilization every now and then. Taking a boat to one of the isles and pitch a tent on the moors for a night or two was something wonderful after all. But you weren't supposed to be away from civilization in a city. It was wrong. It made the loneliness oppressive, the silence maddening.

Something moved in the shadow behind her. She snapped her head around and hit her muzzle on the reception desk she'd slept behind, only to see her own tail swish. After waiting for the pain to subside she opened her watery eyes and rose to her hooves. The wind carried the cries of seagulls from the harbour bay. A branch scratched against some roof tiles.

After half an hour of standing with her forehead pressed against the wall panelling, she whimpered and kicked the desk. Her hindhoof went right through it, splinters bouncing of the walls and clattering out the doorway.

Whoever he'd been, he didn't deserve to just lie here as if discarded. She'd bury him, as well as she could. It wasn't far to the nearest half collapsed wall and even a small grave mound of old bricks was still a grave mound. 

Carrying the bones to the wall would have been easier than carrying the stones back, but she couldn't. She'd tried, after what felt like an hour of telling herself it was alright to pick them up in the only way her new form would allow. She'd almost touched the smooth bone before she recoiled, retching and pawing at her muzzle. Carrying dirty bricks it was then.

There was no reason for her to care. Yet she did. She was doing something for someone who was here. That also meant she needed to move properly, so she concentrated on her hoofwork again and let that other part take over as soon as she'd gotten it right. She was almost finished covering the bones she had pulled together with her hooves when one of them caught her eye. It had some vaguely familiar markings. With a dry mouth she realized they were bite marks.

Something had eaten him. Something had found him alone and eaten him! Alone. Just like her. She needed to move. Now. But she also still needed to finish this, even if her instincts were screaming at her to leave. She owed him that. Her jaws ached when she at last dropped the final brick on the little grave and said her goodbyes.

It took her fifteen minutes to coax her legs into a coordinated trot again. What had been so easy and above all fast yesterday wasn't quick enough today. Not by a long shot. Now she didn't only want to go somewhere, she also felt the urgent need to leave as fast as possible. It wasn't entirely rational thinking, but what good would that do anyway? She tried a canter. The fall hurt.

Half an hour later she'd finally done it. By closing her eyes, concentrating on the gait she needed and demanding from her body to bring her from a to b, she'd found that point again where something clicked into place in her brain. When she stopped to pay attention in exactly that moment, then that new part took over and quashed the feeling of wrongness her bipedal mind still was experiencing. Never mind the bruises.

It was as exhilarating as it had been yesterday and she was more than prepared to lose herself in the sensation again. Everything but dealing with the silence. Everything but dealing with that feeling of dread. She caught herself giggling at the thought of finding a way to have a conversation with her other part.

Currently it seemed to be occupied elsewhere though. She felt her ears swivel on their own accord and her hooves crunched to an abrupt stop, ending her daydreaming. Then her conscious brain deciphered the new input and she heard it.

A distant series of short barks. All from the same general direction, punctuated by even stretches of silence. At the next series of barks, a little closer than the last one, something stirred in the back of her mind. It sent an unpleasant, tingling sensation down her spine. She nervously inched backwards, ears flicking about while trying to pinpoint the sounds. She could discern eight different voices, moving in on a path that crossed the road to her destination. Definitely voices. The barks were far too nuanced and coordinated to be anything else.

With a chill she realized that they had to be a patrolling pack of likely experienced and intelligent predators. She was a small horse and entirely new to these surroundings. The north-easterly wind was at her back and they were approaching from the southwest. Any worry or thought about other survivors, or about everything she had lost, vanished in an instant when the barks grew exited and began to close in on her position.

A wave of heat lit up her muscles. She bolted.

TACKA-TACK...TACKA-TACK...TACKA-TACK -skid-grapple-skid- TACKA-TACK...

It had 'clicked'. Thankfully. Her bipedal mind was cowering under the bed while her quadruped brain made use of its own instincts and the former human's anatomical knowledge to the best of its abilities. Heart pounding in the chest. Tunnel vision. “Don't trip! Don't trip!”

She flew around another corner and onto the main road to the city centre. Little by little, the yipping barks of her pursuers were getting closer.

“You'll never loose them in the city!” the strategically thinking biped screamed from her hiding place. Her quadruped counterpart grunted with exertion and shovelled more adrenaline into her burning muscles. The ground blurred.

Another breakneck jump over a row of small bushes and into a shallow pond, dirty water splashing up against her barrel. Another close call between using a slanted slab of tarmac to preserve momentum or break a leg on it.

Faster. Ignore that chipped hoof and the pained yelp of a dog stopped by a chunk of asphalt kicked loose in that jump. Its angry barks faded in the distance.

“Drift right! There's an opening to the left down there! Give us a wide arc! GET US AROUND THEM!” The pony tried to follow her own command and swerved. Grass, dirt and bits of splintered asphalt flew in all directions as she shifted her weight and leaned into the turn.

Her hooves had astounding purchase on the tricky ground.

The memory of the location popped to the surface of the rider's split mind and brought with it a sliver of hope. There was a startled bark to her left, followed by a metallic clank. A large dog slammed into the remains of a delivery van when trying to avoid a highspeed collision with its prey that had broken flight and shot past it on an unexpected trajectory.

“Good girl!”

A hedge! There had been a hedge and a path between two houses down there! Right at the bend in the road dammit! It was still there. Thank god it was still there. The hedge had turned into an alley with thick undergrowth on what had been the path. But she could still make it out! From here it was only half a mile around a few bends and out onto the open meadow!

Close your eyes. Ears flat. Trust those hooves. Headlong into that green wall.

With a splintering crash she ripped through the vegetation. Thin branches lashed her chest and muzzle while brambles teared out chunks of her fur and bloodied her forelegs. Intense pain on the side of her head. Just a split second.

Thorny branches burned her sides as they snapped back like whips. Close behind her hooves a dog yelped. The pony ploughed through and exploded onto a clearing, leaving a trail of debris and still with two hunters in hot pursuit.

Three more were waiting on the far side, blocking her escape.

She skidded to a wobbly halt on the damp grass while the two remaining dogs behind her fanned out to form a half circle. The other three mirrored their movement in front of her.

Those behind her had a multitude of scratches and one of them seemed to be favouring a leg. A few moments later, from the corner of her eyes, she saw the third one stagger out from the hedge. It had a deep diagonal gash on its forehead, running through the remains of its right eye.

Its growl wasn't so much menacing as it was hateful.

Why were they still here? A normal pack would have given up on the likely futile attempt to bring down a completely healthy animal long ago! An image of the skeleton she found flashed through her mind. Was she the first out of many to put up a fight?

She snorted foam that turned pink as it mixed with the blood seeping over her muzzle. This wasn't a normal pack. They barked and yip-yapped to each other in a short sequence. They were somehow communicating with each other.

She could see it in their eyes that filled with anger. These dogs could bear grudges, no matter that it wasn't her fault she turned out to not be easy prey. Their injuries, maybe even humiliation, had turned the situation personal.

Exhaustion intensified her fear which was rapidly advancing towards panic.

Her chest burned from the lashings, even though her sweater and undergarment had taken a lot of the actual cuts. They hung from her shoulders in loose tatters, increasingly soaked with blood from her torn right ear. The sleeveless left leg looked a lot worse for wear in comparison.

The dogs closed in. Slowly. Very slowly.

Two hunters guarded the entranceway. There was a fence with ornamental spikes to the right. The open field was ringed with dense hedges and chainlink fences. There was no way out.

She involuntarily backed up until a growl from behind reminded her of the move's pointlessness and drove her back into the middle of the snare. Sweat was dripping from her matted coat. She frantically looked around and was suddenly just Brenda again. Terrified shop-assistant turned little pony Brenda.

"HELP!" She cried out in a pitiful voice. "HELP!!!" As if anybody was there to hear her.

A deep growl from twenty yards in front of her made her legs tremble. She looked up and into the eyes of what had to be the pack leader. “I don't want to die. Oh God I don't want to die!” She tried to scream, but no sound came out. “Not like this...”

She noticed her body taking on a fighting stance all on its own and lock gazes with the large dog. Her resolve returned. She felt new strength fill her from her hooves on upwards.  “Leave me alone!!!” she yelled in a breaking voice. “DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING!”

The equine pawed the ground two times, snorted, then brought her back hooves under herself and lowered her head. She never took her eyes off that one dog in front of her, willing the others out of existence. The tunnel vision came back.

“Oh god. I'm really doing this.” All of them charged simultaneously and time turned to syrup.

They took each other head on. Yellow eyes filled with grim determination locked on reddish brown ones filled with pure desperation for survival. Both of them put all their strength into the sprint. This was no normal pack. This was no normal dog. There was more than instinct here. Much more.

He blinked first.

At the very last moment before the jump, his angle veered off the slightest bit and his fangs ripped into the pony's upper chest, not her throat. Instead of gaining purchase for the kill, his jaw lost its grip, leaving deep gashes in her flesh as she screamed in pain.  The next forward stretch in gallop hit him square in the ribs.

Coming down from the gallop's suspension phase, she felt her right hindleg hit the dog. The unexpected one-hoofed shift in grip made her slip and stumble as the dog's body was thrown backwards. She should have torn a muscle and fallen. Her hooves tore into the damp earth instead and, impossibly, her legs took the strain.

Out onto the road. Turn right. Sprint. Turn left.

Slip.

She was already on her hooves again before she had even fully hit the ground. Still she left a bloody smear on the cracked asphalt and offered the remaining pack a last chance to catch up. A single one of them hadn't given up, driven by sheer fury. He pulled even with her on the inside of the curve and leapt, sinking his fangs into her left flank.

“Don't slow down. Don't slow down. Oh god! Oh god this hurts! DON'T SLOW DOWN!” Her other part gave it all and everything that was left.

Her muscles were on fire, her lungs felt as if they would explode any moment now and her vision was beginning to lose colour. Still her mane and tail streamed back like banners, even with an enraged predator latched onto her hindquarters. A hundred yards ahead, the skeleton of a lorry sat on the roadside. Her human mind registered it through a red haze and her pony body swerved.

With a guttural scream she raced up to the vehicle and streaked past it with only inches to spare. Two seconds before impact, the dog let go with a whimper and saved its life. Looking back to check was out of the question.

The open fields came into view. She'd made it. She'd outran them. Pure terror kept her going anyway. At last, her body refused to cooperate any longer and brought her to a stop, head down, dripping sweat and froth and blood and fighting for breath. She burned.

Her blurry sight made out more movement up at the distillery warehouses on the far side of the meadow. That wasn't fair after all this! It wasn't fair! Her shaking legs gave out under her as she finally began to cry.

Seconds later, a young male voice carried down to her. “HEY THERE! YOU OKAY?”

She managed to lift her head but wasn't capable of anything more than a dry croak. She tried to stand, but fell back onto her side with a strangled sob and a whimper. A moment later she heard the quick hoofsteps of three horses.

“Sun and moon! Buidhe! We need to get her up there!” the one who had called out before exclaimed.“Tell Ruadh to stop being a damn jerk and help!”

That was followed by a series of angry neighs, nickers, snorts and very short whinnies of varying intonations between the two others. Her head swam. There was an actual language in there. None of this made any sense anymore.

She cried out when two strong bodies and a pair of nimble hooves half pressed, half hauled her to her legs. Two of her rescuers took her between themselves in a tight hold, so she wouldn't have to keep her balance on her own. She willed her legs to move with a tiny scrap of strength that somehow, from somewhere, had already returned again. Painful step by painful step.

“Just a little more! You're safe now girl!” the friendly male voice came from behind her. “We'll...” He broke off and, by the sound of it, had also stopped dead in his tracks.

“Solstice! Do not delay! Lead us!” one of those holding her upright called back in a female voice with an utterly strange accent she'd never heard before.

“Buidhe!” His voice wavered. “She... She has a mark!”