Lost

She looks around frantically as she walks across the plain, where did they go? The sun is beginning to fall now and if she doesn’t find them soon… well just she has to. Her pace picks up, moving away from the sun so she can see. There are no traces to indicate where they went, did they even pass this way? Soon she is running, her hooves beating the dry soil and sparse grass. The shadows around her loom longer and longer as each second passes, one moves suddenly, a friend? No, a cougar! No, just a bush swaying in the wind, and the wind is growing stronger. She has been kicking up a cloud of red dust behind her with each stride, but now a particularly strong gust carries a wave of the rough powder in front of her. It stings as a few painful particles enter her eyes. Momentarily blinded by blinking it away, a front foot catches on a protruding rock. The stone tears out of the ground and rolls to the side but she still stumbles from the unexpected resistance. Falling towards the ground she catches herself opposite leg and manages to right herself but it’s a hard landing and pain shoots up through leg up into her shoulder with the worst ache lingering in her knee. It hurt, but she could still run, she had to be able to run. Still, she is coming to a rugged hill and the mad gallop that had almost ended her on the plain would be impossible on the rocky terrain. She slows to make her ascent, favoring the hurt leg as she trudges up the steep hillside, hooves scratching on patches of barren stone. Cresting the hill she sees more wide open plain, but with the sun low behind her the hills jagged shadow points like an arrow at a cluster of dark shapes each one moving a little then stopping, moving a little then stopping, over and over again. Her herd! She begins to descend towards them, cautiously at first, cognizant of hurting her leg further or stumbling on the rocks hidden on the shadowed down slope. As the ground flattens out and her excitement for the impending reunion builds she speeds up ignoring the pain. The nearest shape startled by her approaching hoof beats raises its head from where it was grazing and takes a few quick steps away before pausing, turning back towards her and unleashing a whinny of recognition.