A Dark Light

Chapter 2 - Sunpearl

I trotted back to my herd quickly. A couple horses greeted me as I emerged from the bushes. There's been a black friesian following us the past two days and I'd led him off on a little chase hoping to lose him. I trotted up to Silverblaze. "I think I lost him, let's move now" I told him. He nodded and we soon got our herd galloping across the plains. I kept a careful eye on the foals as we ran, especially Pepper. Pepper is Silverblaze's son and even though he has a different mother I feel responsible for him. He's such a sweet little horse. After about twenty minutes we finally slow to a stop in an unfamiliar area. "Where are we?" I asked Silverblaze. When we started moving he seemed to have a place in mind so I let him lead the way. He was a good stallion to have in a herd, most didn't do much and just let the lead mare do everything but he put a lot into taking care of this herd. "I came here around this time last year to prepare for winter, there's a cave over there which is nice when it snows as long as Sundancer doesn't come here we should be pretty good". Silverblaze had never told me the story about Sundancer, but she was Pepper's mom. I still didn't know why he'd made her leave and asked me to be the lead mare but I knew she assumed it was my fault. I looked up at the sky and noted how low the sun was. "Should we get them used to the cave then? The foals might be nervous about it" I asked Silverblaze. "Good idea" he replied. We got the herd to move into the cave for the night. I didn't like that it was a dead end but it would be good shelter in the winter. As the horses all laid down to sleep I went over to Pepper who was laying down but wide awake. "Mom, this place is creepy" he told me. Pepper had been really young when Sundancer left, he thought I was his mom. I knew I'd have to tell him eventually but I'd decided a while ago to wait until he was older. "It is, but it means we won't have to sleep in the snow this winter" I told him. "I've never seen snow" he said. "Well it can be soft, but it's cold, wet, and bright white, it's not good to sleep on so we are going to sleep in here" I explained to him. That seemed to calm him down, maybe he was daydreaming about what snow was like. He quickly fell asleep after that. I sighed and slowly drifted off to sleep worrying about that black horse that had been following us and what would happen if we met up with Sundancer.