In the Valley of a Thousand Footprints

[v] When Stars shine

Moonlight bathed Efa's face as she slowed her horse from a gallop to a canter then continued on at a trot. It had been an hour since she galloped out of Cayrnr. The girl and her horse had made it out onto a flat pasture with trees and woodland in the distance. The grass under her feet shifted quietly whenever a passing breeze blew by. 

 The sun had set in its fullest. Galaxies of stars were visible in the night sky, appearing like a splendiferous tapestry woven out of light and space dust. Her eyes were glued to the sky. At a distance behind her, the sky above Cayrnr was a visibly red gradient. The fire hadn't been put out yet. Efa felt ashamed that she had abandoned her town. Actually Efa felt a lot of things. She had seen a lot of things. But her mind was too numb to process it. It wasn't just her mind either.

Her body ached from being thrown against that wall, and the gash on her head had bled a lot too. Speaking of blood, her shirt was still drenched in dried blood. She had just gotten used to the smell by now. It was not a pleasant ride. Hurting her the most however, was her wrist. It was even swollen slightly. The fireball she had projected seemed to have damaged her worse than she had initially thought. When a few hundred more yards had been covered, it got hard to even hold the rein without her wrist pain spiking up. Rest. . . rest might be good. 

The trees in the distance got closer and closer until eventually Efa wasn't even fully conscious on the saddle. Fatigue racked her starved body. She was about to fall off when Doyle who had been following along behind made a landing on Efa's head. 

"Don't sleep Efa," he cawed abysmally, "you'll fall if you sleep on saddle."

Making as if to shoo the bird off herself, she raised her right hand on accident and immediately felt the backlash as her entire arm began to throb with a pain from her wrist. It was akin to being impaled by a sword.  Ah shit, I need to stop. . .

She had almost reached the treeline when her body gave way and she tumbled off the saddle and onto the grass of the ground below. With nothing left, she began to crawl towards the trees, desperately, pathetically. Halfway through she gave up, flipping onto her back so that she could at least die facing the stars. The last thing she saw before blacking out was the horse's curious face peering over her own. 

Her nightmares that night were vivid. There was blood. A lot of blood. Decapitated heads of all the people she knew rolled around on a giant horse, while from out the horse's mouth caterpillars crawled. Crows appeared from the decapitated heads and ate the caterpillars in a swift motion. Then suddenly another scene where she felt as if her essence was being painted onto a canvas, the brush was long and luxurious, the paints, mild and colorful. Her abnormal dream came to an abrupt end as the sensation of being painted on a canvas faded in and out with reality. She awoke screaming, afraid of the fact that she was a paint on an palette. 

Reality however, did not govern the laws of randomly turning into paint. She swung her head around and took in her situation. 

Her horse was laying on the ground, asleep by the looks of it, and she had been snuggled up against it. Even as she watched, the horse's tail came swooshing onto her. I thought that a tail was a paint brush huh. . . dreams are weird.

standing up and stretching revealed that they were about thirty yards into the forest. 

"By the devil did you drag me all the way here," she asked the sleeping horse, who gave a sort of half snort in way of response. She smiled for the first time proper since going to Pagnodd's house the day before. She knelt and wrapped her arms around the horse's neck and stayed there for a while. She needed the big warm animal. 

It was a large draft horse, a mare too. Efa didn't get to examine her properly owing to the sudden dash away from Cayrnr. She had a beautiful black coat that almost shone in the sunlight. On her face was a white marking that went from the middle of her head to her muzzle, and her feathered hooves were white up to mid cannon.