Suddenly Tamlin felt like a young foal again. Standing on the sideline of a battle - watching death and destruction.
 
He had been (as he so often put it) "speaking to his mother"; something that almost always made him calm and slightly euphoric. But this time, instead of a dreamy state of euphoria, he was thrust into a nightmare. It had happened a few times before, that he was given darkness rather than light by his ritual, and it was always the same day that he was forced to relive; the day he and his family where cast out of their home, beaten with impunity and driven away to the cold, unwelcoming tundra. Tamlin never did like the Aurora Basin and the fact was that he never really healed from the emotional wound the eviction from The Edge gave him.
 
But, unbeknownst to him, he was not really seeing ghosts this time. Even though his state of mind put a filter on reality, he was really seeing a battle and he was not on its sidelines - he was in the middle of the fray!
 
The smell of sweat and fear surrounded him like a thick mist and everywhere he looked there was panic and heartbreak. He was in reality watching the death of his motherland, thinking that all he saw was hallucinations.
 
He was pushed around, almost fell, but instead of the unfamiliar faces he saw those of his former herd around him. He saw Alan, Kou, Descaro, Ulrik, Myrddin, Lena, Giselle, Faelene, Psyche and everyone else who had been on that cold march away from The Edge. For just a split second he even thought he had seen those his heart longed for the most; his parents and... Aviya. Mauja lingered the longest, his white hide visible through the crowd, but then he too disappeared.
 
Tamlin had no reason to believe any of the faces he saw were real, they never were. His broken mind may have fooled him in the beginning, but now he knew the images of his past were just that; images.
 
He did not see the portal. He just stumbled through it and kept making his way through the crowd on the other side. He had just stepped into another land; a new chapter in his life had begun, but he would not recall these events later. When the headaches came the memory would leave him.
 
He set off at a fast pace and disappeared into the new world - not looking back. 


 

Table by Neo