Alone In A Hostile World, Day 1, late afternoon - evening.

[Ringaroo]

There was a rustling under a low tea-tree, and a flash of white - and blinking strange gold-rimmed aqua eyes painfully, a pale head was thrust out of the branches into the burning light of the late sun.
Ringaroo, yearling colt of the legendary herd of the Night Runners, wrinkled his pink-white nose in horror at the blinding glare and the heat already stinging his delicate skin, and pulled his head back into the relative safety of the tea-tree's shade.
He couldn't stay here forever - someone was bound to come back and they might miss him if he was hidden. He tried to remember how he had come to be lying under a tea-tree patch in the first place, but his mind was a blank - nothing but a throbbing pain in the side of his skull to even give him a hint. He had a vague impression of ghostly hooves and legs, tossed spectral manes in the dark, and moonlight glinting off ivory hides... then things got a little hazy, and he had trouble pinning down even how long ago the blurred events in that memory could have actually taken place. How long had he been lying there?
The colt pulled his pale legs under himself and pushed himself up to his feet with a grunt of effort, realising as he did so that one side of his ribs felt oddly painful, but it wasn't until he pushed through the sharp sticks and leaftips of the tea-tree that he fully realised just how much sunburn could hurt.
Sunburn... then he must have been lying there some time, long enough for the sun to pass directly over him and pierce the tangle of the tea-tree through the more open top. Ringa sniffed warily at his pinkened ribs and shook his head at the burning, tingling, tightened skin.
It was definitely time to get out of this clump of scrub, if he was going to have any hope of finding the herd. Gritting his teeth to endure the pain, he pushed through the tea-tree and looked around the valley while he stamped a hoof to try and make his stinging hide somehow easier to bear.
There was no sign of the others. Nothing, bar the aging hoofprints that could be seen on the patches of bare earth, and the churned-up bank of the river where obviously someone had been drinking and taken off in a hurry, sending some of the dirt crumbling back into the water. Ah, the river. The cool water should soothe his burnt skin. Ringa trotted over to the silver thread with his eyes almost shut, just open enough to give him an idea where he was going, and he splashed in up to his belly before turning back to a shallower miniature beach and rolling where the current curled back on itself for a short way, whirled gently about by the little bay.
Some sticks and debris had collected at the downstream end of the tiny sand beach, and as Ringaroo rolled and splashed this debris was loosened and pulled free, continuing on its way down the river. Ringa tried to watch a piece of bark floating and bobbing along, but the reflection of the sun off the surface of the water made his eyes squint shut involuntarily and as he shook himself dry (not daring to roll on his sunburn) he turned toward the pines he could see through his lashes as a dark blur, knowing they would shelter him, as they had sheltered the rest of his herd, from the last rays of the cruel sun.
As he stepped into the gloom, dusk brought early by the shadows of tree and rocky ridge, Ringa felt himself relax and he allowed himself another look around the valley for a trace of his missing herd. Still nothing to say that they had come back for him... Here, there, a strand of silver mane or a few white hairs on a rock confirmed that the Brumbies of the Night had passed through their old stamping ground, but they were not there now. At least, not that Ringa could see, and now that he was out of the brightness he could see in the dim lighting as well as any other horse might see in daylight, with his young eyes already accustomed to a life of darkness.
How could they have left him? Had they thought him dead? Had they intended to come back looking for him, but been caught up somewhere in some escapade that delayed their return? Where was his dam? As she would not have another foal this year, Ringa was still with her, and had never been far from her for long. Especially living the secluded, insular lifestyle of a Night Runner, bonds formed with others were all the more intense and less easily forgotten, and the herding instinct was magnified.
So where were they? Where was his dam, at least? He wouldn't care how long the rest of the herd took to come back if his dam had been there to assure him everything was alright.
He searched the pines for a few hours as the shadows lengthened and stretched across the grass, but nothing more promising that a wisp of white hair did he find - he had half-expected to find them all grazing peacefully around every turn as he went... but they were not there.
Ringaroo called out to the high ridges on either side of the valley, and listened for an answer. When none came, he called again, and again, this time to the whole of the darkening Moyangul Valley, and waited, ears searching the wind for that cry he somehow knew was not coming...
As the sun dropped below the western escarpment, the young white colt's pleading voice echoed and echoed off the rocks and was flung by the wind to the cloud-streaked sky, and though he stood there with every fibre of his body listening and wishing for a response, the only answer came from the wind howling through the mountains far above, and one unblinking, cold star staring down at him from the indigo sky of the east.
Finally, when the last of the echoes had died down, Ringa stood shaking with the effort of his cries, and hung his chiselled white head with it's strange-coloured eyes till his muzzle was mere inches from the tips of the snowgrass.
They might be waiting for night... perhaps, now that it was dark, they would come back... Surely they must have missed him now, and be trying to find him? Yes, they must come back for him in the night, he thought, and tried to convince himself that all he had to do was wait, and the herd would appear as if by magic with the dying of the light.
He turned to lick self-pityingly at the sunburn on his ribs, wincing at the pain and flicking his ears around as if he half-expected his dam to appear and snuff him over like she always did when something was the matter with him.
If he just waited... surely if he just waited here, where they would find him...
The ivory colt folded his legs underneath him once more, not tired after being unconscious for so long already, but with a dreadful spinning ache in his skull and a feeling of hopelessness in the back of his mind that together seemed to drain him of the restless energy he might otherwise have had.
But... if he just waited... they would come back for him. They would have to come back for him... was he wishing hard enough?

[Ringaroo]

Ringa had not been lying there long when he heard a muffled footfall not very far from where he lay. Scrabbling to his feet, the pale young horse broke into a trot as soon as he was up and within moments had increased his pace to a canter as he hurried toward the sound of hooves on grass and hard earth. As he rounded a cluster of rocks that seemed to have been thrown together long ago by some giant hand, joy fluttered up within him like a bird taking flight. They were back! He knew they would have to return for him, after all, he was one of them, and they never left their own kind behind. Even as a yearling he remembered well the things his white dam had told him of the differences between a Night Runner and an everyday brumby - and his faith in the unwritten laws of the Brumbies of the Night was as yet unshakeable. Night Runners did not leave each other behind. Therefore they would be back for him - in fact, he was sure one was here even now, a scout sent ahead to make sure he was alright, most likely.
But as he came flying around a looming pine and clattered over a flat rock embedded in the earth to come closer to the river, Ringaroo's legs stiffened involuntarily and he propped and slid to a halt with his head thrown high in alarm.
This was no Night Runner!
She looked to be roughly his own age, or a little older, and he almost did not see her in the fading light of the evening due to her colouring, but the filly standing on the bank of the river, muzzle dripping water as if she had just been drinking and eyes wide with surprise, was bay - not ivory.
The two young brumbies stood motionless for a moment which to each seemed like hours as they sized each other up and worked their way over the shock of their respective discoveries - for the filly, the discovery that she was not alone, and for the colt, that he in fact was. Then, ever so slowly, hesitantly, the filly stretched her neck out and reached her damp muzzle toward Ringa's pink-white one. At first Ringa did nothing more than eye her warily, holding back out of an odd sense of this being somehow not right. After all, she was coloured, so obviously was no Brumby of the Night. If there was one thing above all that he had been taught about the code of the ivory herd, it was that Night Runners stuck to their own kind, and did not socialise with others. And since every Night Runner was the same unusual snowy hue that Ringaroo was, it was easy to tell who to count as 'others' - anyone who was not gleaming white like himself.
But as his loneliness and the sense of loss that had been coming over him since he woke to find the herd gone overtook him, the young horse cautiously extended his own nose, ready at any moment to snatch it back if the filly made some kind of hostile movement. Their soft muzzles touched but briefly, but it was enough for both of them to feel a barrier had been dissolved, and the bay filly visibly relaxed a bit, seemingly glad to find Ringa was only a youngster even if he was funny-looking. She began to graze, and Ringa fell into place beside her as if he was grazing with his own dam, despite the filly being almost the same age as him, but she did not seem to mind his proximity and the white colt felt a little less alone with the warm scent and the constant background sounds of another horse nearby. She may not be what he was hoping for, and she may be one of the 'others', but she was the only company in this empty, dark valley, and night was closing in swiftly. The night... when he should be running with his dam and the rest of the herd, ghostly legs flashing across blackened hillsides, only starlight and moonlight to guide their hooves. He sighed, and glanced over at the bay filly. It was probably a bad idea associating with her, but the thought of spending the night alone was looking less appealing the more he thought about it, and even coloured company was better than none...

* * *

She introduced herself as Kaiya while they grazed, but could not or would not tell him anything more of herself, including how she came to be wandering on her own in the Moyangul - not a place lone fillies normally ventured, especially at night. Ringaroo didn't know the full reason, but he knew that the daytime horses were afraid to come down here, and that it was something to do with the land belonging to the Herd of the Night, and he knew that it was strange enough to find a filly such as Kaiya by herself anywhere, but in a place like this... what was she doing here? She had not volunteered the information, and Ringa was certainly not about to ask. It had taken him about half an hour to say his own name once the filly had spoken to him, and even then he had spoken so softly she had barely heard him, though luckily for him she seemed to find this more amusing than irritating.
As the shadows lengthened and became one darkness that filled even the air itself, Ringaroo realised that although he could see the filly plainly, she could only see him thanks to the starlight glowing on his pale coat, and wondered if something were the matter with her eyes. Perhaps she was nearly blind, and that was why she had been so startled when he had first met her on the river bank? But she seemed to be able to see just fine then, why did she now have that blankness in her eyes that said she could barely make out his shape in the dark?
He raised his head and gazed out into the valley. Though night had fallen in this gloomy hollow, it would still be light for another hour or so up higher, and the sky was tinted with a range of colours more than half of which Ringaroo didn't know names for, above the hulking silhouette of the range hemming him and the filly in. Ringa sighed, wishing that he could see a hint of white crossing those slate-grey mountains, coming down the ridge to meet him. Of course, he didn't want them to see him with the filly, but he would have warning if they were coming, from the thunder of their hooves echoing through the night, and he could slip away without letting them find her. For he knew that if the stallion found Kaiya with him, she would be killed for laying eyes on them.
He looked behind him to the bay grazing a little way from where he had left her. He felt like a traitor to his herd for not hating her, but he needed a friend right now, and she had come like a sign at exactly the right moment. He was also unable to see anything wrong with this particular filly - perhaps this one was different to the coloured horses the herd always warned him about. Not that he would be able to convince the rest of the Night Runners, but it eased his conscience a little to think that Kaiya might be the exception to the rule, so long as they agreed to keep their meeting a secret...

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ooc: (edit) i changed the filly's name to Kaiya, since i knew i had a name i wanted to give her earlier, then forgot it, named her something else, and just found my note with the original name on it, lol. and since she's an npc and this is the first post she turns up in, i wanted to fix it quickly before i forgot or before it became too confusing to change it.

This post has been edited by Thowra on June 06, 2005 07:13 pm