.FrozenFire. wrote:Username: .FrozenFire.
Equid's Name: Apala {an Indian name, meaning "woman cursed with a skin disorder"}
Age: 7 years
Gender: Mare
Height: 12.2hh
Story: For some creatures there is a hole between reality and imagination. For the rest, there is smooth transition between the two worlds.
Once, the mare, this story is about, was nameless. She wandered the lands alone, never seeking company. She had never learned how to communicate. Other equids avoided her when she was a foal, because it was said that she had a connection to a demon, even that her father was a demon. And that she killed her mother. The poor young mare had not survived the birth, and the nameless filly was alive. Secretly the other equids even feared her. Back at those times, the nameless filly was almost black, her quipping nearly invisible and that what should have been a tobiano pattern was grey and looked washy. They interpreted her eyes to be red although they were not. The nameless filly had no chance against the other equids and they would never support her.
One day she found herself alone, everyone was gone. Hoofprints were all over the ground and everything looked like something terrible had happened, but what should that be? She would have woke up if something had happened. That day, the filly started to doubt herself. Could it be that she was a kind of demon? Frightened of herself she ran into the forest, as far as she could, away from anyone she could possibly harm.
Eventually she reached a small pond in a very dark part of the forest. When she looked into the water, she couldn't see her reflection. There was nothing. There was just a pitch black silhouette where should have been an equid. The filly stumbled backwards, suddenly falling over a root. The filly lost her sense of time and the strange noises of the forest sounded like a lullaby to her. She fell asleep.
No one knows how the filly survived. Some years after she disappeared, an equid spotted her coming out of the woods. But the mare couldn't say what the mysterious filly looked like. Somehow she looked like nothing. A silhouette.
Nameless knew that. She was nothing. Really, somehow invisible, but she was still present. The shadows ate the mare as soon as she walked into the dark areas of the wood.
Silently the mare came back to her pond. She startled when she saw a strange light flying over the water. Suddenly, the light landed on the grass and a beautiful rose grew out of the ground. The rose was the most beautiful thing the mare ever saw, so she walked up to it. But you should never trust dark beauty. Every equid learned that they shouldn't enter the "black" part of the forest. It was said that dark magic cursed the woods.
Nameless should learn it in a painful way. The rose suddenly grabbed one of her hind legs with a twine and threw her onto the ground. The thorns carved into the leg, but the mare seemed to rest in trance.
When she eventually awoke, she looked into the eyes of an old equid stallion. Nameless lay near to a river and when she looked into the water she saw herself in color.
"I....I have colors. I have colors!" She stood up and stared onto her reflection. Then she noticed that something was wrong.
The old stallion walked to her side and noticed her worried look.
"The price of beauty is high. Perfection isn't always beautiful and beauty isn't always done in perfection." The stallion said and turned to leave.
"But, but that doesn't make any sense at all." Nameless replied.
"You will understand Apala, you will understand little mare." Then he walked back away. He walked back into the forest.
In her head she heard a voice saying, 'Don't return to the forest. Go away from here.'
But she didn't understood anything at all. Apala? She had a real color now? A color and a name?
Apala, once the nameless filly, has both now, a name and a color. But do you believe her story? Do you believe that a cursed rose and a mysterious stallion made her what she is now?
That depends on your undestanding of reality and imagination. But either way. Apala isn't that alone anymore. Her past let go of her and she found affiliations. Still, mysterious. No one really knows who she is nor what she is up to.
I do assume that she has good intentions. Rumors should not get her down again...
About 750 words.
Congrats! I really liked the idea of this one, and the detail.
