He was only dimly aware of dark, of silence, and not at all of the small throng of strangers waiting outside his stone. Their voices didn't penetrate the chrysalis, or his sleep, but that sleep had grown restless, of late. A little shift here, a brief awareness of warmth--then he'd drift back into the unconsciousness of the stone.

The Titanite stone had been thinning, though--visibly, even covered as it was by random swatches of foliage left by one well-meaning but ill-informed parent. Almost unnoticed a fracture had broken along its greater length, a skyward crack that was barely more than a narrow, dark streak along the stone. Then another, as the stone had weakened further, until a large shard simply gave way, much of the Titanite's upper shell simply collapsing into the chrysalis, on top of the child within.

The sudden weight, the flood of cold and air, jolted the foal awake with a start of panic. Gangly hind hooves kicked up, out, at nothing in particular. He thrashed and turned, scrambling upright and then falling backwards, out of the chrysalis entirely, landing with a wet thud in the leaf-strewn dirt. He struggled for a moment and then lay there, coughing out fluids, his ghostlight eyes blinking blind at the too-bright light above him.

He was a spindly thing--quite large for a foal, but more than that, twisted and twined with wicker. His face almost looked as though he were more related to Marrow than the rest--a skull-like facade of that same bleached wood. A short mane and tail looked more like dark fiber than hair. Wicker knew none of this: he only knew that he was suddenly awake, aware, and that this was far more than he was prepared to handle.