The days dawned cold and dark. Horses took shelter in caves, huddled together for warmth. It was, by far, the coldest winter anyone could remember.
Many former land horses woke up in the morning to find their wings too frozen to move. Afraid the artificial wings would break in flight, King Shady ordered all land horses to remove their wings to avoid the temptation.
Some former land horses refused to give up their wings, even for just the winter. They defiantly flew in the daytime. Artificial wings couldn't be recognized except for up close, so no one realized the deceit.
Until they fell. With a snap or a crunch, a wing would break and a horse would fall. Luckily, there had been no serious injuries. Yet.
The Kings and Queens of Rocky Cliffs were forced to take drastic measures to protect their herds. They banned flying altogether, even for naturally winged horses, until warmer weather.
Horses protested, of course, but who was there to blame? Those who fallen had learned their lesson, being scared out of their wits. But the horses felt they should blame somebody, as if one horse had to take responsibility.
So they blamed Cloudy.
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Even before Copper was fully awake, she knew Cloudy had left the cave. Copper shook her head and opened her eyes.
Cloudy's parents, Torrent and Sky, slept at the back of the cave, where it was warmer. Their nephew Toby, whose single artificial wing had broken the day before, had his real wing laid across the back of his half-brother Skip. Tussock the black whuff was snuggled into Sky's wings so only one ear showed.
Despite the fact that Toby and Skip stood at the cave's entrance, Cloudy had still managed to slip away without waking anyone.
Copper wondered briefly how much sleep Cloudy had gotten the previous night. There had once been nights that Cloudy could sleep dreamlessly, but those were merely a memory now. Cloudy was tormented each night with visions of every scrape, bump, or bruise to be suffered by a horse the following day.
"Skip," Copper whispered, poking her adopted brother with her nose.
Skip blinked sleepily at Copper. The "water" of his markings swirled slowly, as if the cold made it sluggish. It was a bit eerie how much he looked like a horse-shaped collection of water, even more so since he had removed his fake wings.
"What's up? Cloudy?" Skip asked.
Copper nodded. She was unable to keep the strain out of her voice as she said, "She's gone again."
Skip turned his head to peer outside. "It's pretty early. I don't think the sun-horse has risen yet."
Copper peered past Skip outside. He was right. The moon-horse was on the edge of the horizon.
"I'm going to look for Cloudy," Copper said.
Toby twitched and opened an eye. "Hm? Is Cloudy missing?"
"Yes, I was just going to find her," Copper said.
"We were," Skip corrected.
"I'll join you, then," Toby said.
"You don't have to," Copper protested.
"No, but she's my cousin. Plus," Toby stretched. "I'm already awake. Let's go."
The three horses filed quietly out of the cave, careful to not wake up Cloudy's parents. No one had told them about Cloudy's tendency to wander off. They worried enough about her as it was.
Copper shivered as she stepped out of the cave. A brisk wind ruffled her mane and wing feathers. She sank into snow up to her knees.
"So, where should we start?" Toby asked when they were outside.
"North?" Skip suggested.
"Wait," Copper perked up her ears. "I hear voices."
Skip and Toby listened. There was the sound a horse talking from behind a nearby structure. Whoever was talking was being too quiet to understand. Copper, Skip, and Toby tiptoed closer to hear. A second, louder voice made them freeze.
"Why didn't you warn us?!"
Copper started at the familiar phrase. Toby scowled fiercely and dashed around the structure. Copper and Skip hurried to follow. They found themselves faced by a scene that, like the angry words, was all too familiar.
Cloudy stood backed up against the structure, head and wings low with defeat. A tall orange land stallion stood threateningly in front of her. A colt, yellow with swirls of orange with a broken artificial wing, stood behind the stallion. The colt held a foreleg up.
Toby didn't slow. He rammed his shoulder into the stallion. The stallion stumbled back, but flattened his ears and flared his wings.
"Back off, Calor!" Skip snapped, going to Toby's side.
"Let us be," Calor spat. "We were talking to Cloudy."
Copper ran to Cloudy's side. Her friend was shaking, not just from fear, but exhaustion as well. Dark circles ringed Cloudy red-rimmed eyes.
Skip drew himself up. "Whatever you want to say to Cloudy, you can say to me."
Calor gestured to his son standing behind him. "Cloudy saw that Mark was going to hurt himself, but she didn't warn us!"
"I tried," Cloudy whimpered.
Copper gently shushed Cloudy and leaned comfortingly against her. Now she understood why the colt seemed to be favoring a leg, but he didn't look too badly hurt.
"He was flying," Toby said. It wasn't a question.
Calor fumbled over his words, probably searching for an excuse. Finally, he stomped a hoof and tossed his mane. He cast one last glare at Cloudy, then said, "I'm not the only one who feels this way."
Calor trotted away, head held high as if it was below him to continue the conversation. Mark shrugged apologetically at the group, and limped after his father.
Copper shook her head. Mark was a good colt, but rarely stood up to his father. She had the sneaking suspicion that it had been Calor's idea for Mark to fly.
"Are you okay?" Toby asked Cloudy, his anger gone as quickly as it had come.
Cloudy shrugged, her head drooping lower.
"I tried to warn them," Cloudy repeated.
"It's okay," Copper soothed. "Mark wasn't hurt that badly."
Cloudy sniffed. Copper was alarmed by the tears gathering in her eyes, but didn't know how to comfort her friend.
Skip stomped a hoof. He was glaring in the direction Calor and Mark had gone. Copper sighed. Skip was becoming increasingly short-tempered these days. Though she didn't blame him.
Once word of Cloudy's visions of the future had spread, horses kept coming to Cloudy and asking what would happen to them. No matter how many times Cloudy explained that she only saw glimpses of random horses, they kept coming. They were desperate to learn their future. And the more horses that came begging to know about themselves, the more frequently Cloudy dreamed.
When the weather became bitter cold and the flying problems arose, the more resentful horses like Calor had grumbled that Cloudy should have told them it was coming. The more time that passed, the more horses spoke against Cloudy.
Frightened by the rising hostility, Cloudy had started trying to warn all the horses she had seen in her dreams about what was about to happened. While she was sometimes successful, more often she was too late.
The events just built on top of each other. When Cloudy was too late with her warning, horses got mad. When horses got mad, Cloudy became upset and her dreams multiplied.
Toby and Copper had become defensive of Cloudy against all horses, but Skip seemed to just get angrier with each confrontation. Skip had confided in Copper that the horses' cruelty toward Cloudy reminded him of Fritz.
Fritz was Skip and Toby's birth father, but he had rejected them both for various reasons. When Skip had brought Toby to Rocky Cliffs and Toby had seen his father for the first time in five years, Fritz had become extremely angry and secluded himself in the far edges of Outer Cliffs. Few horses had seen him since.
Skip saw Copper watching him and sighed. He turned to Cloudy with a small, forced smile. "Don't worry about them. Horses are just frustrated with all this cold weather. Everything will go back to normal come spring."
Cloudy shrugged and said just what Copper was thinking: "I don't think anything will ever be normal again."
"Well, that's enough doom and gloom," Toby said. "How about a nice, quiet walk while we have Rocky Cliffs to ourselves?"
"We should go on a long walk. Say, like the one we took last fall," Skip suggested.
Copper and Skip laughed, and even Cloudy managed a small smile. Skip, however, remained sober.
"No, I'm serious," Skip said.
"What? Why?" Copper asked.
"Cloudy should get a break from all these horses breathing down her neck," Skip explained.
"But... she just can't leave!" Copper expected Cloudy to agree, but when there was no response, she turned back to Skip. "Her parents were so upset the last time she left without warning!"
"They can come too!"
"You don't really mean...," Toby let the sentence hang.
"You and your mother did it for five years."
Toby's ears flattened slightly. His mother had died only three months before, and he still had trouble talking about her.
Copper interjected, "Cloudy, what do you say?"
The milky-white filly lowered her eyes. "I can't."
Copper wasn't surprised. Cloudy was getting thinner and frailer by the week. Copper realized she didn't think Cloudy could live outside of Rocky Cliffs. There was little protection from the weather on this side of the Rushing River, and to cross the river to the forests beyond was risking attack by tree cats.
"Who would warn them?" Cloudy went on.
"Cloudy! You have to stop worrying so much!" Copper said with a shake of her head. "Horses have gotten along fine up til now."
"I can't just ignore that someone's going to get hurt! Not if I can do something about it!"
Copper sighed, deciding it wasn't a point worth arguing anymore. Would Cloudy's dreams even stop if she left herd? If not, there was no point in her leaving.
"Let's just... go back to the cave," Copper said.
"Can't. I have to..." Cloudy's gaze became faraway.
"Wait!" Copper yelped as Cloudy unfurled her wings.
Too late. Cloudy jumped, then flew out of sight around the structures. Copper and the others watched her disappear, knowing from past experience that there was no stopping her.
"She isn't really helping matters by flying all over," Toby sighed.
"Yeah, Queen Ruby might have been trying to help Cloudy by giving her special permission to fly, but it's just making others angrier," Copper said.
The trio stood silently in thought. They had been racking their brains to figure out how to stop Cloudy's dreams. The truth was, though, they didn't even know why Cloudy, and only Cloudy, had the dreams. How were they supposed to stop something they didn't understand?
"Well, what do we do now?" Toby asked tiredly.
"Let's find Jay. Maybe he has some idea on how to help his sister," Copper suggested.
Skip and Toby nodded. Neither were hopeful, but what else was there to do? Perhaps they would just have to wait and see what happened.
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Cloudy landed on a structure's top. Wind had cleared the snow, exposing the short brown grass. No one else was in sight, much less the buckskin filly that Cloudy knew was soon to slip on ice hidden by snow and scrape a knee.
Cloudy shivered and wrapped her wings around her. She should be with Copper, Skip, and her family, not huddled alone on top of a structure. But images of slips and nicks were jumbled in her brain. She could barely keep the past and future ones straight.
She sighed, eyes sliding shut. She was so tired. She didn't feel like she was sleeping anymore, just watching bad things happened night after night. It was like a nightmare that never ended. Cloudy didn't know what prompted her to open her eyes, but when she did, she gasped.
The moon-horse was no longer on the horizon. It was below the gray line that marked the horizon. It glowed too dimly for the cloudless night, and Cloudy found the night to be darker than any she had experienced. Then it flashed so brightly, Cloudy had to close her eyes. When she re-opened them, the moon-horse was back to its original spot.
Cloudy shivered harder, her teeth clacking together. That hadn't been her imagination or a hallucination, but a vision. At some point, probably in the near future, the moon-horse was going to set... permanently!