Welcome to Gaia! ::

Shallow breaths echoed in the small cave Qiyam had claimed as his own the night before. His chest pounded and his pale eyes were wild as he searched frantically for something. It wasn't often that he slept, and when he did it never lasted long. The nightmares were inevitable, and there was only one thing that could calm him. His brothers didn't know, of course. He would never worry them with such a silly little thing. With his standing, he feared they may see it as an omen or a warning. He couldn't have that. They were just nightmares, after all.

There. In the corner of the cave, not far from where he had slept. He scooped the sack up with his horn and brought it into the light. There, he nosed through it for the needed supplies. A small skull, a rabbit carcass, some pale stones, and some even paler tufts of hair are all that he pulled from the hefty bag. He fashioned a sort of altar on a natural shelf in the cave wall and began to murmur a prayer to the spirits.

Always the same. Always recurring. The dream, which happened nearly every time he slept, was a memory of sorts, manipulated by fear and guilt. In the dream, Qiyam was a boy. Very young, still frail, but with more sense than the average child. In one of his lessons with Broja, he had learned of the walkers. They'd disguise themselves as animals, manipulating their forms to fit in.

In his dream, Qiyam resented those keeping him in the grove. He understood that they were simply trying to protect the boys, but it felt like a prison to him. He dreamed that he spoke with one. He imagined that while the adults were preoccupied with the other foals, he saw one lurking in the shadows, and he spoke with it. He begged the beast to free him. He assured it there would be no contest to their mighty wrath. The skin walker grinned at the naive child, and that's where the dream always ended. The unicorn would awake panicked, a severe feeling of guilt so far in his gut that he could never ignore it.

Qiyam understood that the dream was just that: a dream. He knew that he had never seen a walker before that day, but to him the scary thought was that his first feeling after the incident was relief. He was a foal, who couldn't completely comprehend the situation, and yet while his brothers mourned and grew from the horrible loss, he felt... Free. And to this day, he continued to feel that way. While he was paranoid and maybe even a little delusional, he no longer felt trapped.