Sheba silently bounded through the cold snow. She giggled as she climbed the high hill that overlooked the plains, her father's territory. She glanced down at her black stocking marks, now encrusted in the crystaline snow. She shivered from the cold, but stayed, looking proudly at the territory her father so bravely protected. She swelled her chest with pride, knowing someday she would be lead mare like her mother over these plains she so proudly looked at. Her legs began to numb and she knew she should go back to the dry spot her mother had dug for her and her slow-growing fur. She sighed, knowing her legs would be stiff in the morning. She took one last glance and peacefully began to meander back home, nosing the frosted flowers that forgot to die in autumn.

Sheba suddenly heard a distant, pained scream in the stony silence of night. Her father! She heard a mournful and anguished cry from her mother, and fearful shouts of the other foals and their dams. She soon filled with a tingling, heavy, scary feeling of dread filling her small cold body. She began to gallop as fast as a 6 month foal can, but each stride felt like eternity as her families' panicked shouts increased in volume and passion. She began to gasp, not in exertion, but from the mounting dread filling her body like heavy lead, hardening in her marrow, slowing down time until a second felt like a hundred lifetimes. She reached the crest of the hill in a few minutes, but to her it was an infinate amount of time. She gasped in horror at the motionless body of her father, who had seemed invincible and immortal to her in her short life. She tore her eyes from her father's body and her eyes rested on her panicked mother, who was running around the herd searching for Sheba. Sheba began to ready her legs to jump down and race to her frenzied dam. Before she could, her mother's once- sweet voice rang out, rough and scared. "Run my flower, run far away! Life as an unwilling herd mare is no life for you! Find a life and never go back!" The strange stallion rushed at Sheba' s terrified mother and quickly struck her down. All the mares screamed with panic that Sheba never dared to imagine, at the lead mare's death. Sheba's eyes widened in terror and she began to gasp, feeling that all the air in the wold had gone. She shivered in fear as all the family she had left, ran away, the murderous stallion snapping at their heels.

Tears streamed down her small brown face as she stumbled down the hill, terrified, a few moments later. She collapsed next to her mother and sobbed loudly, filled with the kind of anguish that made you feel like life would just stop dead and you'd be stuck forever in endless sorrow. She heard a small rustle like a bush but only suspected the wind. Soon Sheba felt a warm muzzle wiping away her tears. She hiccuped softly as she stopped crying. She opened her eyes slowly and sadly and looked up at the mare others had sneered and teased for her eyes. Her name was Luna but others called her Looney Luna or Lonely Luna. She was really quite a magnificent mare and her eyes only intrigued Sheba, cloudy white, just barely showing darker than the whites of her eyes. At her early stage of life, Sheba could not understand jealousy. The jet-black mare smiled sadly and pitifully at Sheba. "Come child, it is good to mourn the dead, but not moving on will keep them from enternal peace in the afterlife." Luna's voice was barely a whisper, but Sheba could still hear the richness and beauty of her melodious voice. Sheba sniffed and shed a few more tears before standing up and nuzzling her dead parents. Luna watched her sadly, and Sheba saw that she was looking without seeing. Luna was most definitely not blind; her eyesight was as sharp as the eagle's who visited often. No, she could see but she was stuck in her own mournful memory that Sheba' s innocence and sadness had reminded her of. "What's wrong Luna?" Sheba whispered hoarsely. "My foal... My first and only foal died. I was newly in foal when your father let me join." Luna smiled wistfully, "I gave birth barely a week ago. She looked just like you. That bloodthirsty brute trampled her in the woods..."  Said Luna, her eyes glazing with unshed tears. "We both lost our closest family. Mother said those who understand are as good as family..." Said Sheba, gently leaning into Luna. Luna nuzzled Sheba and their tears of grief mixed in the comforting light of full moon.

"We must leave." said Luna as the rising sun tinted the clouds a rosy pink, a joyous and happy color, one that gave Sheba a tiny hope for a new beginning. As she followed Luna up the hill and turned to see her brave and loving parents one last time, her blood began to boil, her gut seemed to make a fist, and a primitive instinct flooded her senses. She wanted revenge. Sheba wanted Vengeance. She narrowed her eyes angrily at the wooded hill where the stallion had dissapeared- Along with her closest friends and the friendly caring mares. That horse had ruined her very future, her life. Even at her barely-weaned age, she understood. Life for her herd would never be the same. Never. She swung her head around slowly, turning to look sadly and wide-eyed in fear into Luna's kind and gentle- also unusual- eyes.

Luna led Sheba to a clearing, with a small and dirty and ice- filled pond and dirty and coarse grass. Luna walked gracefully over to what Sheba saw as a solid wall of leaves. Luna parted the green curtain with her head and nickered softly and welcomingly to Sheba. Sheba looked in wonder at the tiny room surrounded in leaves. She did not smile. She doubted that she would ever be happy again. In the center of the room was an old and gnarled tree trunk, stretching to the ceiling. Sheba lay sadly, with her head on a root, and cried noiselessly. Almost instantly Luna lay down next to her, licking away her tears with a warm and caring tounge. Luna would never replace her parents, but Sheba knew she could help replace Luna' s foal and Luna would try hard to be a mother to orphaned Sheba. Luna looked over Sheba with her unusual eyes and thought of Olivia, the filly that would never grow up, never taste juicy spring grass, or an apple. The filly that would never meet her sire, or gallop free, or jump with wind in her mane. Luna silently shed tears and went to sleep, Sheba next to her.