Solitary Star // Snapper #1

A beautiful mare, with a coat as dark as the rocky hillside at dawn and eyes as bright as the clear blue skies that follow shortly after. Her face was painted in beautiful white streaks, a delicate snip and star with a marking on the underside of her jaw that resembles a skull. Her legs and belly are white, akin to the sea-foam that hits her when she wanders out into the sea, indulging in a little bit of time to relax, to swim. To be at peace.

Her name is Snapper, and she has been walking the hills beside the sea for as long as she can remember, the sand under her hooves, the wind in her mane and the water treading up to her hesitantly. Though she is large compared to the rest of her family, and even the rest of her herds, or the herds before and beside them, Snapper would love to know just how much vaster the blue can be.

Her curiosity fills her soul more often than not: occasionally misunderstood as being naughty or irritating, Snapper gets easily distracted when she sees something she wishes to know about. She sees the town ahead, and her formidable form is wandering closer, ever wishing to know more. She sees the snowy lands in the cold winter days, and her only thoughts are to feel the white beneath her hooves, to feel the snowflakes covering her belted body.

She watches as a tall human walks up to her, hand outstretched with little white cubes on his hands, a delicate whisper on the wind that spoke to her. Woolly feet bringing her closer, she snuffled up the cubes and was quietly delighted to realise just how sweet they were. Many humans came and brought a snack, but many wanted to entice her over with fruits, like the red round ones, or sometimes green ones. She preferred the green ones; they were more sour, had more flavour, more difference to the grass she ate every day. Snapper is relatively picky with the snacks she will accept from the humans - for example, bananas are far too soft and she doesn’t like how she sticks to her mouth - but she had never tried the sugary cubes she was being presented with now. As she chewed on them tentatively, the human with short, wavy hair stood taller, petting her and beginning to run a hand through her mane and over her liver chestnut and white back. Her white marking was like the corset the human wore, but in the colour of her coat, instead.

The human was speaking to her softly as he braided a bell into her mane, tying it tightly. The ribbon was dark blue with silver embroidery of little stars, and a large golden moon at the base of it. It shone in her mane as though she herself were the evening night, with the sun disappearing over the east and the stars beginning to do their delicate dance.

She has always been a beautiful mare, since she was a little filly with tufts of white fur, her puffed-up tail wiggling as she explored the land around her. Again and again, every day, she woke up, and she dragged the other youngsters from her herd to go and play. Eventually, humans took use of this, and it hardened her ever so slightly - now, she sticks to going on her own.

A solitary star, in her deep blue sky.