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Rise was running. He didn't know how many days had passed; the marshes had grown thicker as he traversed what he thought - hoped - were the outskirts of the swamp, and consequently he was no longer able to see the sun move through its cycle. But after a large clump of forestation the canopies had started to open up again, and light lazily filtered in through the leaves. Time started to pass systematically once more - the beams shifted from silver to gold to silver to gold, and the branches pulled apart ever wider as he progressed. His determination finally allowed itself to habour hope, and as the light swathed across the swamp floor, he ran faster.

The orange glow gave way to darkness, then silver, and he sprinted across gathered puddles of moonlight. The Swamp whispered sagely and urgently to him, but he did not listen, or rather, could not hear - Her words were lost in the whistling of warm, oppressive wind and the pounding of his hooves against muddy ground.

A window of sky was open, stars glittering fiercely through the frame of branches. His gaze was fixed, he hurdled mangrove roots and any obstructions with increasing grace, propelled by force of will and anticipation. It wasn't long before he forced his way through the shrubbery and smashed through the woody restraints, into open sky and moonlight, into -

- into another swamp, with lowland vegetation, and the same murky waters.

This time he tripped carelessly over scattered sediment of the salt marshes and stumbled into a slowly rising pool with an undignified splash. Like a foal, he hunched, legs splayed, in the current, emitting an incredibly pathetic moan of misery.

His head slowly turned up, seeking the source of the lilting (but rather severe) voice, and found a silvery blue filly with moonlight glinting off sleek strands. Her dark eyes were therefore especially piercing, and it took him a moment to speak.

"I...
I was trying," he said, as the tide lapped around his scales, "to get out. Out of the swamp, out of - anywhere." He exhaled labouriously. "Out of here. Anywhere here. There must be something else. There has to be. I've been going forever now. But all I've gone is from one swamp to another."

"And then?" he asked, both weary and hopeful. "What's after that?"

"And beyond the sea?" he whimpered piteously, quite out of it by this point.

A wave of despair washed over him, or maybe it was saltwater, he wasn't too sure. "I can't go home when I've been trying to escape it all this time. I came all this way, I went through so many things and..." he lamented, miserably, "...I may as well just sit here and wait to die. That would be better than - that would be better than all this..."

His glowing eyes had shuttered during her little speech as he drowsily shut out all the noises of the swamp and let her invectives into his flicking ears. That mercurial, ethereal filly may have rightly shamed him, but he really wasn't sure at this point - his mind mulled on her words as his body slumped deeper into the water, drifting off to sleep in the outlying salt marshes of Matope.





He was awoken by the heat of midday sun, a sensation he was not used to. The tide had receded and he tentatively licked the salty particles off his limbs before dipping them in a slightly cleaner puddle. What happened last night seemed like eons ago, and the filly...

He surveyed the empty fields, and shook his head. Whatever she was, he understood. Rise glanced up at the sun, paused, and started on his way once more - back into the swamp.