ORIGIN

His running was not graceful--even on flat land, his youthful limbs and knobbled knees would have been a jerky stumble. The patches of thick mud didn't help, and his flight was floundering, falling, and staggering.

Now and again he fired a frightened glance back, pointing his little horn to the sky, ready to fight should the vulture return--though terrified of having to do so. When at last he reached the safety of cover, he found that it wasn't much cover at all. It was but a large, downed black tree trunk, one of the Dead Marsh's bit of life, fallen and left to rot. He clambered down to hunker against it, his heart racing, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

By some miracle, he'd neither fallen into deep water or quicksand, nor had he plowed into a patch of toxic gas.

"Here--fast," he urged Oleander, and he noted with fear that the red had entered her eye--or had it come from it-? Adrenaline still rushed through him, though he could feel the distant, dull ache of pain throughout his shoulder and his face. Though he didn't know it yet, that pain would become extreme, given time; for now, only fear held it at bay.

He pressed against the black, dead wood; it was taller, even on its side, than the foal was and hid his body from at least one direction. He was slicked enough with mud that he'd be hard to see from any distance, and at least the rank stench of the marsh might hide the scent of blood. He wasn't experienced enough to understand that he was safe--or as safe as one could be, in Hydra; he only knew to lay there, driven by instinct, his head and ears flattened low and his voice very quiet.

"You--okay?"

His dark eyes searched briefly over hers--the injury to it had streaked with blood, so that the gold-flecked magenta was stained and ruined. He felt fear roil through him--and he wanted that to stop; wanted that more than anything. This world was not friendly, it was frightening, dark and scary. Things might come at any moment and hurt them more.

"Your eye-" he squeaked softly. She couldn't see; her eye was damaged. But him--he was hurt? Were his eyes okay?

He blinked--he could still see. He looked down at himself, at the blood where it trickled down, and then out at the trail of it that sifted into the marsh where they'd run, where it'd fallen, drop by drop behind them. The pain was bad, but he felt almost ashamed to suggest that when this other foal had clearly lost so much more. Would her eye heal-? He had no way of knowing. But her wounds were greater than his, he thought. "Am okay," he answered, his voice a near-whisper. His voice shook, his body trembled, and he pushed closer to Oleander--his only company in this dark world--and did the only thing he could think to do: he talked. He talked to distract her, he talked to distract himself, but he kept his voice deadly-quiet. To do otherwise, he knew now, was to invite catastrophe.

"Don't know... what that was. Am new. You new? Who you?" He sought, briefly, for a name--a word to identify himself, to define himself. He'd fought--he was a fighter, he decided, and he answered without much consideration or second-guessing. "Am Warrior." He found himself inspecting her wounds, again--and then the marsh, and then the sky, fear keeping him on high alert. "Hope we are--safe, now..." he half-whimpered, despite his attempts to stay brave before the wounded filly.

"Scary," he agreed, softly, not daring to budge a muscle where he lay in the muck. The pain was already growing worse, a roaring heat in the wounds, not made any better by the filthy swamp water that had filtered into them. He tried to ignore them.

"Don't know where we are," he answered, looking around again. A moment of consideration, and he wagered a hesitant guess. "...Wet place. Hot place. Bad place, maybe." He lifted his head higher, briefly daring a glance out behind the log. He couldn't see the vulture, anymore, nor anything more; it seemed quiet, a dead swamp stretching into the haze as far as the eye could see.

He sank back down against the zebra filly. "See nothing--I see nothing--... Um. Only water. Air?" He didn't know all the words, but they seemed to come to him in drips and trickles as he needed them, and he struggled to commit them to memory.

"Oleander. We stay here-? Or-... We go?" It was a hesitant question, uncertainly-asked. He wasn't quite sure where they could go. Staying here seemed dangerous--and already, hunger, though he didn't know what it was, gnawed at him. But heading out, again, into the unprotected unknown--that seemed deadly, too. Unsure of himself he fell still again, watching the zebra foal in silence.

Could she even move, or travel-? They were warm here, at least, but with the wet, it wasn't too hot. Could they just... stay here, then, indefinitely-?

The horse foal hesitated yet again. And who could blame either of them-? Two lost children thrown into a desperate struggle for survival in a blistering hellscape upon their very emergence?

The sting of his wounds, the scent of his own blood, had fear roiling through him. Half of him was tempted to sleep: to rest, to regain his strength. The other half, as with Oleander, feared staying here; and some part of him, too, some part filled with strength and fire, wanted to push ahead and see if he could find safer haven.

"You can stay-? Rest? I can look for-... a better place?" he suggested, though it was uncertain. Eyeing her own wounds, though--and in particular the cut across her eye--he offered another alternative. "If you want--sleep. I'll watch. You're safe; I'll protect," he assured her, with a courage he didn't feel, with fear thrumming through his gut.

The foal gave a dip of his head in acknowledgement.

"Okay. I'll--stay awake. You sleep," he responded. He dipped his head, then, offering a light brush of velvet-soft muzzle in a reassuring gesture, toward part of Oleander's face that wasn't wounded. He then curled down, back on knees and hocks, lying in the muck in silence.

There he waited, and watched, and tried his best to stay awake despite his trembling weariness, his fear, his wounds. And stay awake he did: quiet, alert, struggling but staying true to his word. When his head began to dip, his mind supplied, unbidden, fearful images of vultures creeping up on them--and he'd turn, staring around with wide eyes and flared nostrils.

But he played sentry, and no matter how long Oleander rested, Warrior remained alert.