//------------------------------//
// Dim 
// Story: Lost of thoughts 
// by CraftAids 
//------------------------------//

He weaved between trees and green leaves. Somehow, being back in this familiar setting left him less tense. The sun still shone through the canopy. The bushes and hills still blocked his view, at least when he was trotting. If he stood up, he could actually peek over the tops of most of them.

He found a tulip and a daisy and a small yellow and purple thing which he thought was probably a flower and which tasted like white Airheads. He wasn’t really hungry, but he didn’t want to stop, and he wasn’t quite full.

He looked over a bush and just about shat himself when a bunny bolted out of cover and away. He didn’t see food, so he calmed down and walked to the next nearby bush.

He still knew how to get out. Town was generally in the direction off to his left. He peeked over a bush and found a clearing full of lilacs. He dropped and, on four legs, moved around the bush, to the clearing.

The sky became pink and orange and purple and darkened and was black with white specks and transparent swirls of space colors.

Slowly, he stepped into the clearing. He looked up and behind and around and none of the plants or inanimate matter answered his accusing glare. Backing out of the clearing didn’t bring the sun back, either. Eventually, his heart calmed down. The dark was dark and the lilacs continued to exist a few feet away.

Lilacs taste like salted popcorn. He only had a few. He still wasn’t full. He still wasn’t hungry; he just thought to save some of them for breakfast. It wasn’t like he could just carry them all around in his mouth forever.

He trotted out of the clearing and hid between a few bushes sitting in a circle. He stood, facing town, and closed his eyes and breathed. The breeze caused lazy scraping and clanking of sticks in the trees. The air cooled. His thoughts slowly began to drift away from the topics he was thinking about. He began to let go of his sense of worry and safety. He forgot about figuring out the world. He forgot about where he hid his soap and he forgot about his breathing.

Air continued to move through his nose. Eventually, the air was cool. The leaves rustled softly and continuously. His heart beat slowly and more slowly and even more slowly. He could hear it beating. He ignored it, but it didn’t ever quite fade. For that matter, neither did the sound of the leaves. He waited for the sounds to go away. He realized that he had already waited for a rather long time. His heartbeat sped up just a bit. He tried to shift his hooves, just to get a bit more comfortable so that sleep might finally take him. He didn’t feel them press into the ground.

He opened his eyes to find darkness on every side: not a single star up in the sky. He looked to find mists of drifting blackness pierced in thinning, star lit, faint-light patches. The wonky sky could not compete to hold his interest when made to compete with the feeling of nothing coming from below his knees, and, so, he was watching down as, slowly, from the darkness, his legs emerged, resting on the ground. The dim mists turned brighter by the moment but gathered most densely at his hooves, then went away.

Everything was dead. The leaves were blackened and curled on the ground and he could see right through the bushes all around him. The moon was bright through the canopy and even the trees were dead and curling up.

He trotted to the lilac clearing. The blackening lessened as he went, but half the grasses and flowers were still crispy brown. He tasted a crispy lilac. It tasted like burnt popcorn and a burnt popcorn smell traveled from the back of his neck and to his nose and remained, even after he spat it out.

He was still in the forest. He was still as tired as when he first started trying to sleep. It was still night. The world still wasn’t answering his accusing facial expressions.

His reactions weren’t helping anything. Answers could wait, anyway; the only things he really wanted were food and rest. He also left his prized possession wedged in some wood near a lake. He was broke and friendless and skill-less and generally ignorant and he didn’t have any place to even keep anything.

He looked at the good, colorful lilacs. He needed a bag.

It was a simple plan, exactly the size that people without experience could execute on.

He left. He went back to his dead, moonlit patch of dirt and then questioned that decision. He moved away from that set of bushes and to the next set of semi-secluding, easy to walk though spider storage units and felt safer.

He faced town and closed his eyes and waited for sleep. It did not come. He could always feel the air pushing softly. He could always hear his breathing, and he could always hear the forest. The moments ground into his mind, one by one, and when he opened his eyes, he found only pitch black, again. The sunny sky pierced through the dark within a few seconds, and it soon faded and pooled under him. When he looked down at it, it was gone.

Everything was dead. Breakfast was delicious. He was still as tired as he was when he started trying to sleep.