Broken Horn and Yellowstar

by yrupostinthisgarbage

Chapter 1

On that fateful night, as I tossed and turned,

It was a clear midsummer late night, and the faint moonlight shone through the window. As I lay in bed, uneasy from the events of the day, unable to sleep, I tried thinking of the breeze and the sound of the crickets outside. After some time, mind and body relaxed in unison as I drifted into dreams.

All of a sudden, I was galloping through the marshes, speeding away from... something. I tried to look back as I ran so far away, but I couldn’t discern the vague dark figure that chased me. I turned my head back forward just in time to see that I had left the marshes and was galloping straight into a canyon. I stopped dead in my tracks and slipped through the dirt, decelerating to a full stop a hair’s width away from the edge. I took a second to catch my breath and allow my heart to stop racing, and I ventured a look. The vastness of the bottomless dark seemed to stare back in defiance.

her voice rang through my troubled turbulent dreams,

I did not want to jump, I knew I didn’t, but my legs acted of their own accord, as if seduced by the lifeless void. In the struggle against myself, I slipped over the edge, and I fell into the darkness. And I fell. And fell.

“Broken Horn!”

The penumbra gave way to total obscurity, as I kept falling and falling further than it seemed possible. I could no longer see anything; I could feel the blackness on my fur as it flowed around me in my descent, after gravity had ceased to exist. If black is the absence of color, the color of the void indicated the absence of matter itself.

“Please wake up!”

At that moment, there was a faint suggestion of light: a sliver of white flowed from the bowels of the earth and spread through my vision, and engulfed me. The void was now the color of everything. My ears felt the deafening sound of the wind at terminal velocity. I opened my eyes just as I saw the ground about to crush me.

and although I don’t know why she came to me—

It was late at night, and the faint moonlight shone through the window. I stood up in my bed, confused over the previous events. I wondered for a second if any of it had been real.

Then, I saw her figure. She stood next to the end of the bed, her golden mane swishing with the breeze. Her characteristic ruby pendant was missing, but the two red roses pinned on her mane were unmistakable.

“Yellowstar?” I asked in a daze. “Why are you in my house? What’s going on?” I telekinetically grabbed my glasses and put them on.

“Help me,” she implored, “please!” My eyes adjusted to the lens only to see the tears roll down her face.

I wish she never had.

She walked away from the bed onto the window and placed her front hooves on the frame, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. “I must give chase, but I cannot recover my mother’s pendant alone.”

She turned her head. “Please!” she implored. I looked on in confusion, wondering if I was still dreaming.

The blame rests on my shoulders alone—

Instantly, she jumped out of the window. My bedroom was on the upper floor, and the worry that she might have sprained her legs jumped to my mind, but I didn’t have time to warn her. I rushed to the window to assess how much harm she had suffered before calling the doctors, but all I saw was the mare gracefully standing up after landing perfectly and silently on the ground.

She faced me from below. She yelled out, “The trail is still hot!” and ran off.

—I could have stayed at home, not gotten involved.