Martin woke with a start, shaking off the afterimages of the dream that had stolen him into sleep. They dissipated like wisps of smoke and already he felt himself struggling to recall what he had seen. His mouth filled with the subtle taste of lavender.
His brow furrowed.
Life was full of middles and endings, the young stallion mused, and sorely lacking in beginnings. He'd had a plan setting out from his ancestral home that had involved a fair bit of knocking down the doors of every god, mystic, and scholar he encountered until someone could give him the answers he sought, but in all honesty he had grossly underestimated just how much space there was in the world. His fifth naming day was fast approaching and he'd spent most of the past year wandering alone through lands with dead gods and names lost forever to history.
There were days Martin questioned his decision to leave, and he found himself more and more thankful for the dreams he'd carried with him out of the vale. At times they felt as warm and real as the world around him: a simple, breathing thing curled just beyond the edge of his mind's eye, its spark ever receding the more he struggled to reach for it.
The landscape changed around him, drawing him almost magnetically along toward some as yet unseen goal. He grew lean and sinewy with the rigors of the road, practiced his forms daily to keep himself sane, and had only just begun to consider the possibility that he'd walked off the edge of the map into some abandoned, unfinished pocket dimension when he broke through the verdant forest into a rolling sea of flowers with a castle looming importantly on the horizon. Interlaced with the heady scents of spring was another, more familiar smell: horses.
Martin's heart quickened in his chest. He bounded a few steps into the meadow before collecting himself again, scouring the landscape for a glimpse of one of them.
At last, a beginning.
