Welcome to Gaia! ::

On a long cold night they gather close, boisterous and full of good cheer, many bodies keeping warm, curled comfortably around each other. Some speak longingly of the desert, of how the sand stays warm even when the dark and wind carry frost across the earth. Others heckle each other across the bodies of their friends, laughing and jostling, competing in petty and fun little games of song and poetry. Acha’s mostly, though a few Kiokote and Kimeti create a windbreak around the group, their larger bulk put to good use. Watch Me, of course, has splayed out in the middle, Acha limbs draped across his form, his body used as a pillow for heads and hooves.

Eventually the night pushes in, the cold seeps through the cracks, and somebody asks, “what is there to fear in the desert? Why would you leave? Is there even anything bad?”

“Of course there is,” Prize snorts. She has her daughters by her side, sitting upright, a regal trio. It’s hard to see her expression in the dark but the next words send a shiver down the spine of all who listen, “the desert is wide, so very wide, and it is always hungry.”

She sighs and the wind sighs with her. It’s rare for her to join in but when she does, her talent is obvious. “You will walk and walk forever in the desert. Thirst is a maddening thing. Sometimes the oasis you knew was there, is not at all . The sun is relentless, dries up the very blood in your veins until you are left a husk. But that is life, just as the Swamp sometimes takes, the mud sucking the unwary down into the depths."

The mood has shifted, somber now. She continues, her voice carrying to everyone who wants to listen.

"The desert feels a great emptiness.

It takes all who live there, eventually, but sometimes it runs you down. And nothing can save you when it comes for you. It begins in the sunlight, when you believe you are safe. Maybe you have wandered off from your herd. You can still see them in the distance on a sand dune, their shadows stretching out. Perhaps you even hear their laughter. You’re happy, content. Then you hear the snuffling, the sniffing. It sounds like a sand dog, one of your own perhaps. Except you can see both of yours cavorting further away.

You call out but nobody hears you, the sound is swallowed up as if it never was. Fear crackles down your spine. You know this, you’ve heard of this, on nights like now when it’s cold and dark and voices are kept low. You want to run back to your family but when you try to turn towards them properly you feel something n** at your heels. Run, run, run. It’s all you can do. Your body reacts as your mind screams, ‘go back, go back, go back!’. You can’t.

The sun is too bright, the hot air burning your lungs as you start to run. You feel them at your heels, always just right there, waiting for that fatal bite. You stretch out your limbs and race your death, hurtling across the desert. Your family is long gone, your dogs are long gone, so is your life. It ended the moment you ran. The desert is here to claim you.

Eventually, after such a long, long time, your strength is gone, but even then you keep running, until finally you stumble.

Then the n** becomes a bite, bright searing pain through every inch of your body. They have worn you down, the wolves of the desert, creatures of the sand, they rise from the dunes in multitudes, their eyes dark coals as they shift and circle, their forms there and then not there, immaterial. But their teeth are sharp enough, and though you have no strength left, you still struggle as they drag you down and the sand fills your lungs and they tears you open to feed their master.

Your family looks down from the dune, wondering where you've gone. They call for you, they search, the dogs sniff at the place where they saw you last. There are no tracks. Eventually they move on, sorrow in their hearts and they speak of you no more, lest the desert decides to take another.”

"Don't go to the swamp banks at night," said the old mare. "Lest you be caught by the Water's Edge."

The Water's Edge, it was said, went by such an innocuous name because you never knew where it lurked along the innumerable stretches of mangroves, and reminded kin to beware its presence. The Water's Edge waited for little foals to waver at its fringes as the sun set, creeping ever closer as dark fell. The Water's Edge would snatch at kin, gentle touches and pricks at first, then when you've had enough, and tried to scramble to shore, it would wrap around your hooves, holding tight.

"The Water's Edge," the old mare said, "is not evil, nor good - merely a part of the swamp, as we all are."

Foals contested this apparent moral ambiguity, considering that it was busy entrapping little babes, but the mare stood fast on her opinion.

The foals soon grew to forget the Water's Edge. They grew to colts and fillies, caught up in their troubles, learning to hunt and traverse the swamp. It was only when this colt was stood, ankle deep in the water, watching the sun set glittering on the muddy waves, that the old fear of the Water's Edge came creeping back. It was then that the colt, being quite the grown kin it was, dared the Water's Edge to do its worst. The colt, no longer a frightened little foal, was very sure that the Water's Edge was a mere story. The colt, watching night wrapping around the swamp, dared the Water's Edge.

When the moon's light was shrouded by dark clouds, the Water's Edge answered.

The colt was suddenly aware of the water lapping around his thighs, weighing down the fluff of his tail. The colt moved towards the banks, and felt the telltale p***k of the Water's Edge, scraping past his knees. The colt stumbled, the Water's Edge rasping against his limbs. The colt scrambled, now a frightened foal, towards the shore, kicking his legs to swim, the Water's Edge scraping his pelt open. His hooves, ever predictably, were then hooked down, and in his thrashing, the Water's Edge pressed against his throat, seizing his heaving shoulders.

The Water's Edge took him.

In the morning, as the tide receded and the salt glittered in the sunlight, the stiff corpse of a colt lay tangled in the reaching roots of the mangrove trees.

Regarding the colt that was once a foal, the old mare said wryly, "the other name of the Water's Edge is natural selection."

"Have you heard tale of the Kimeti who haunts the mist?" Egg asked from his perch at the edge of their camp for the night. Dawn's ears flattened against her scalp at the very mention.

"No," she answered. "Don't tell it."

A snort sounded from behind them. Price had narrowed his gaze on the grinning buck. "He's telling untruths again. Ignore him."

"I'm telling tales," Egg corrected. "Truths matter not."

Price coughed, the wheezing sound rattling his bones.

"Speaking of the undead..."

"I'm not undead, I'm just old. Go on then, weave us your web."

"Very well." Egg nestled himself in a comfortable mound of dirt, his eyes trained on Star. "Many moons ago, there was a young Kimeti who had given birth to three foals. They say a strange rage boiled within her, as wild as the wind, as untameable as the sea. One night, it became too much for her body to handle. It spilled forth like a dark curse, consuming her whole. On this night, even the stars had found themselves heavy with sleep and left the sky darker than the ink of a squid. She roused her foals from their nests of twig and grass. They followed her in a single line deep into the swamplands, until the mist grew so thick they could hardly make out the very hooves they walked on. One cried out that they could hear the bubbling of the swamp and feared falling in.

Their mother's face came suddenly from the mist, her eyes glowing a heinous red. As her lips parted they could see their reflections in the points of her sharpened teeth. The mist surrounded them once more. Over the pop and churning of the swamp water, the sickly sounds of meat snapping and bones crunching filled the night air.

When the sun rose, the Kimeti had vanished. All that remained of her foals were their small hooves, floating in the swamp. There are nights when the mist grows thick and the stars retreat... and if you are particularly unlucky, you will find her."

Despite her obvious fear, Dawn pressed her friend. "If the mother killed her foals... and no others were around... who carried the story from that night?"

The fur around Egg's mouth pulled tight in a way that made her wish she hadn't asked.

"Did I say three foals? Perhaps there were four..."

Everything is not as kind as I am, Bury the Sunlight began, a small lamb lay at her side at the mouth of a small cave in front of a small body of water. At any given time the swamp is as ruthless as it is wet.
A smog rolled in, a smell lingered with it as if it were as palpable as the fog itself.
You smell that? The lambs nose twitched in the air. That's the smell of death. Speaking of.. have I ever told you the tale of Bloody Berry? She spoke, looking into her reflection. She died right here in these waters, actually. She sure did. Drowned by those scaly vermin, eaten alive. The lamb stared wide eyed into the water.
They say if you say her name three times towards your reflection in the water, she'll drag you down to your watery grave, but I wouldn't believe it. It's an old doe's tale.
The water rippled in front of them and the lamb scrambled into the cave. Bury giggled at his folly until she noticed a kimeti's head sticking out of the water staring back at her.
Then a whisper.

On̾̉̇̑͂̉cͭ̂̈́̂͗ͩeͥ ̃̑ͫỉ̿̓͂̇ṡ̉̏ͯ̏̍͑ ̐͛̐a̅ͪllͪ ͫ̚iͣ͌̅̄̐ͮ̚tͩͪ͐͐̆͂ ͯ͆t͌ͮ̎̇͊̄ͪa̐̎̈́͋kě̓͗sͮ̀ͥ͊̂ͬ̚, ́͒ȁ̾̃̓̀͛cͨ̃ͧ̓ͮt̋͌͌̐u͊͒̅̇ͥ̏̚â̅ͭl̃͊ͯͯͩly̓̃.ͣͫ̐̔̑͆

The listless trees swayed in the night breeze, and Mirewood slipped out from between them like a ghost. The foals already eyeballed her, her forlorn expression and drooping tail and hair - she was an image of the swamp itself. Tonight, she wore muck around her neck and down her back, the sticks by her tail held moss and draped down one leg. She looked like a drowned old crone. "Hello, little ones," she said softly, her voice carrying on the breeze so the tiny crowd of foals and fillies had to siddle a little closer to hear. "Tonight is a special night. Do you know why?"

They silently shook their heads, transfixed already. She took a deep breath and then contemplated the moon for a moment, letting the silence hang heavy in the air. "Tonight is the night where monsters are released into our world. Monsters, spirits, and the grisly undead. That is why we gather here, together, in the warm light of each other's presence. Because out there," she said, gesturing with her nose to the woods, "is where they roam, looking for the loners who slip off by themselves. The ones who think they're brave." She turned her head back and stared wide-eyed at them. "Are you brave?"

They started to shake their heads, but were unsure, and glanced at each other uncomfortably instead, saying not a word. Mirewood only chuckled once, wryly. "I don't blame you. I'd just come from there, listening to the sounds of sticks snapping and the creaking that comes from old trees in the breeze about to break. But I'll take the natural sounds of trees and sticks over The Laughing." The foals and fillies flicked their ears, confused, and waited. "You haven't heard it before. Only those of us who have seen The Other Side can hear it, and only very few of us have survived to tell the tale once discovering the source. On this night, a monster will roam the woods, howling his laughter into the trees. It attracts all sorts, and the laugh changes form depending on who hears it to do so. It may be faint and cheerful. It may be dark and sinister. And when you get too close, it will swallow you like the darkness itself, a madness that spreads like a disease. Any kin may double over in heaving agony unable to stop until their lungs finally collapse. It's wiped out entire tribes," she said slowly watching each one of their faces.

Suddenly, she freezes, and snaps her head around to the forest, flicking up her ears. The foals and fillies, alarmed, peer around her cautiously into the trees to see if they can catch a glimpse of something, or hear anything in the distance, but there is only silence. "Are you okay?" a filly asks, carefully. Mirewood turns her head back around and stares at her with piercing blue eyes in the night, looking haunted and drawn.

"It's here," she says quietly, and the little group rises to their feet in terror. All but Mirewood who continues to lay in her same place. A single snapping twig near the edge and a low chuckle echoes through the trees. Then a whispering, choked laugh. And then a loud, and boisterous howling laugh that echoes from tree to tree and reverbrates in their skulls. One filly starts to snort, and crack up, and the others stare at her and circle her to give her space, perplexed and amazed.

"How can we hear it?!" "Is she alright?" "Mirewood what do we do!?" The little crowd begins to panic, all while Mirewood stares in silence and the filly begins to roll and howl with laughter, strange snarls interrupting her entrancement. Slowly, Mirewood also begins to chuckle and laugh, and the little herd of foals and fillies gasp and back up, screaming and turning tail into the crowd of kin far off in the distance beside them.

The two pause, and actually begin to crack up laughing. Jester and three other clowns appear from the forest edge and laugh and howl with them at the hilarious display, clacking a hoof with the little filly who played along. "Trick or Treat," he says.