The Great Expedition

Chapter 21

As the sun rose Stardust blinked the sleep from her eyes and ambled towards the stream. Once she got to the stream she saw that the buck drinking from the stream. The buck did not lift his head from the stream as Stardust walked up next to him and started to sip the water. Once Stardust was full of water, she trotted back to the spot where she had slept. Honeysuckle was still dozing so Stardust trotted up to her and nudged her hard. Honeysuckle's eyes opened and she fell sideways from the momentum of the nudge. Once Honeysuckle got herself balenced, she pinned her ears back and showed her teeth. She then chased Stardust away from her and trotted to the stream. Stardust started grazing the grass, which was now lower than it was when they first showed up. Once Honeysuckle was back and ate a bit they would head on thier way. After 30 minutes the two mares trotted out of the clearing and tried to make it back to the path. Most of the time the mares were trotting in between trees and the thick vegetation. It was too dangerous to canter, there was a risk of hitting a tree, so they resourted to trotting single file. Honeysuckle was pissed being stuck behind Stardust, she kept trying to over pass Stardust and invading her personal space. Stardust, fed up with Honeysuckle, kicked out nearly missing the mare's face. That stopped Honeysuckle for awhile.

Around midday, they stopped to graze a bit on the forest floor. There was not much grass to eat so the mares were still hungry but decided to wait until there was better grass to eat. This time Stardust let Honeysuckle lead. If the mare galloped to far ahead, Stardust would stop and wait. Once Honeysuckle noticed Stardust was not following her, she would race back to Stardust and wait until she started moving forward again. Stardust was starving right now, she decided to try to eat some bark. She had seen some deer eating it back at the ranch a few night when they were brave enough to come close. Stardust immediately spit it out, it tasted horrible. They had not reached the path yet so they carried on trotting in the thick trees. They took quite a few breaks to catch thier breaths and try to graze a bit. At one rest stop there was a small creek coming from inbetween some rock, there was not much water coming out but if would tie off thier thirst for awhile. The mare took turns drinking and keeping watch while the other one was drinking. The forest was prone to bears, cougars and coyotes so the mares had to be careful. -

Honeysuckle was getting tired and starting to drop back from Stardust's heels. Once the mare came to a flat long open space, Stardust decided to gallop to the end and wait for Honeysuckle there. There was some good grass to eat so if Stardust had to wait awhile for Honeysuckle she could eat. Once she reached the entrance of the space, she started to gallop slowly building up speed. In the middle of the open space, a blur pulled along side her. At first she thought it was Honeysuckle finally catching up with her but the blur was black not golden and the blur was speeding up. Stardust's competitive spirt kicked in and she pushed herself faster trying to surpass this black blur. Stardust pulled ahead and kept that lead until the end of the open space. At the end of the open spaced, she slowed to a stop. The black blur slid to a stop to in front of Stardust. Now that they were not running, Stardust could see that the black blur was a black horse. He was muscular and had a long black nose. His ears were pricked forward and his nosetrils were open to catch air from that hard run. He had a long wavy mane and a long tail. 

As they were standing there, he blew into her nosetrils and she blew back. He then said his name was Cobalt and that she was very fast. He also said that he was a wild horse, once broken and trained but now free. He also asked where she was going and if he could acompany her. Honeysuckle then came galloping up to Stardust and was very curious of this strange horse. Cobalt put his ears back and beared his teeth. Stardust turned and started to trot out of the open space and down a path that had not been used in a while. Cobalt promptly followed her with Honeysuckle a couple strides behind him. The three horses trotted in silence until the next rest stop. Honeysuckle knew that she should not aggrivate this strange horse, she was unhappy because this was supposed to be an adventure for just her and Stardust and now this strange horse shows up and tries to take her away from Honeysuckle. Stardust noticed that Honeysuckle was quieter then she was before Cobalt showed up, not doing her usual antics of racing ahead, bucking and trying to get Stardust to play tag with her. As they continued the trail widened to fit two horses at a time, Honeysuckle tried to get next to Stardust to show the other horse that he was not welcome and that they were just fine before he showed up but Cobalt beat her to it and positioned it so that she was behind and could not hear what they were talking about. Honeysuckle grew even more quiet by the minute, feeling left out, wanting this new horse to go away and to have Stardust all for herself.

Now the sun was setting and the horses had to find a place to sleep for the night where they would be safe from predators. Honeysuckle wanted to go into the forest to sleep but Cobalt said that there was a nice clearing up ahead that predators never visited. Naturally Stardust decided to take Cobalt's suggestion which made Honeysuckle even more angry at the newcomer. Once in the small clearing Cobalt slept next to Stardust and when Honeysuckle tried to join, he pushed her away so she had to sleep away from thier little herd.

Author's note 

The photo at the top is Cobalt

QOTD: What is your favorite science principle?

Mine would be schrodinger's cat or Locard's exchange principle.