Born Wild {Completed}

River Rescue

Chapter 16

The sun isn't up yet and I walk over to wake Wildfire up. He snorts in shock as I nudge him awake. He goes to graze near the creek, so I follow. After literally ten seconds of grazing, I hear this splashing in the river. We toss our heads up and I spot something horrifying. A foal.
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I gallop over and not thinking, jump into the water. Its strong currents threaten to drown me, pulling at my adrenaline filled body. The foal goes missing under the water and I dive under. My teeth cling on to a furry body and I send it straight up to the surface. It's flailing legs hit the bank and I gently, drop the foal. I pull myself up and look at what I have hopefully saved. A chestnut paint colt, he looks five months old. He looks up at me and then drops his head to the ground. Wildfire lunges forward and lays down, almost on top of the colt. I shake and do the same, but avoiding crushing the poor colt with my nine hundred pound body. He is shaking, I'm guessing is either shock or how cold that water was. It was pretty freaking cold! The sun appears just in the nick of time, and shines on us. Warming the colts and my body.

With all the body heat and the sun warming us, we get dried and warm in ten minutes. He falls asleep in the sun so I get up, without disturbing him, and walk over to the grass because my stomach alone could wake him up. After I quickly eat my fill, I lay back down and whisper to Wildfire,

" Hey. Good morning!" he looks over to me.

" Morning. That was very brave of you, jumping into the river for a foal." the foal nuzzles his head into my belly.

" Well, I couldn't just stand and watch. He looks pretty young." he nods his head in approval. The foal flutters his eyes open and nickers to me. I nicker back. Wildfire stands up with a sigh of relief, and the foal looks up at the slightly intimidating chestnut stallion. He tries to curl up under me but I stand as well. The foal wobbles to his feet and looks at us.

" Hi! My name is...... um...... uh oh. I don think I have a name." we look at each other and Wildfire steps forward,

" Hello! My name is Wildfire. I-" he doesn't get to finnish because the foal scurried behind my black tail to hide.

" Its okay, he isn't going to hurt you. He is our lead herd stallion." he looks around, confused.

" Then where are all the other horses?"

" Well, there isn't any except for us two."

" Oh. Well I'm kinda lost so could I join until I find my herd?" this foal is just full of questions.

" Yes, only if you can be a brave little colt and face Wildfire. He will keep us safe. By the way, I'm Willow." he looks at me and nuzzles my nose. It seems as though that his mother already weaned him because he ate grass just fine. He walks a ways away before squealing playfully, he is playing with a deer fawn. His mother watching at the edge of the forest, I lope over. She spots me and shies a bit.

" Sorry if I scared you. Your foal, I mean fawn is very cute!" I manage to say.

" Thank you, and your foal is very cute as well." I hate to lie to such a nice doe. He isn't my foal.

" Thank you." we look over to the two jumping babies. The fawn bleats happily and my foal squeals in delight. The mother has to go so they say goodbye and they bound off. He happily trots to the river to drink beside wildfire. I walk over and catch Wildfire staring at the foal, then turns his stunned face and looks at me.

" He isn't scared of me? What did you do or say." he sarcastically whispers. I nicker in amusement and go munch on some flowers.

" You know, you look just like my mother. And Wildfire looks a bit like my sire."  I start to think of names for him, Sylvester, Zelda, Wiley, Yogi. Yogi is going to be his name.

" How do you like the name, Yogi?" I ask him, his eyes light up with excitement.

" Oh yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes." he seems pretty happy about his name and prances over to Wildfire.

" Guess what? My name is..." he leaves him cliffhanging before whispering.

" Yogi." and then bursts off in the meadow, bucking and rearing. He looks at me then nickers, amusingly. The sun was past noon so it was probably around 2:30. We graze until we are full, the frost has melted and the mountains have snowy white tips.

We would have to travel past the mountains before the first snowfall or else we could get trapped with the snowslide without any grass to graze. I trot over to Wildfire, almost slipping on some frozen mud.

" Hey, in a few days I think we-" I try to say as he interrupts.

" Should leave the meadow and away from the mountains." I'm just standing there awkwardly.

" Did you read my mind or something?!" I playfully exclaim. He just shakes his head and whinnies amusingly. The sun is now stetting behind the mountains and it gets colder every night. The three of us huddle in a circle, with Yogi in the middle.
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I jerk awake at Yogi squealing his head off.

"Look! The stars are falling!" Wildfire finds that amusing and I realize what he just said.

" No, sweetie. It's called snow. It starts just before winter." He looks at me, confused.

" Snow. Snow, snow, snow, snow." He finally gets it through his head and jumps out of the little circle. Wildfire is back to sleep, he had stayed up late last night because he thought he heard something in the bushes. He didn't. Yogi and I trot down to the river for a drink. I sometimes jump in and go wash off but it is freezing cold. The sun pops up from behind the mountains and warms up the meadow.

I gently nudge him awake and he gets ready for the day. There is suddenly a big, grey cloud above us and blocks out the sun. Wildfire comes back from the river and we all graze for a bit, eating our fill. I stop grazing and raise my head to talk.

" I think we should start our journey-" I manage to get out, before being cut off again.

" Up the mountains. That is a snow cloud and we need to get out of the valley." I stand silently and send my ears back the slightest bit.

" Seriously?! Just stop doing that!" I sarcastically whinny to Wildfire. We all line up with Wildfire in the front, Yogi in the middle and me in the rear, to start our journey up and through the mountains.

Authors note:
The two mares at the front are Night and Kindy. Night is the black one and Kindy is the dark bay.
Thank you!
-Acacia
{Edited}