Sabba opened his eyes on a wall of dirt. Dusty particles clung to his lashes, and he blinked them away while his mind stirred enough to think clearly.

He’d fallen, but the bird had not taken him.

Still, a slow flexing of his neck brought pain, the memory of hooked claws raking through his coat. The world seemed to press in on him from all sides, but the dim glow illuminating the dirt in his field of vision gave him hope he’d not been totally buried.

Soon, his mother would come for him. Any moment now, he’d hear the rhythmic advance of hoof beats. Sabba breathed in, coughed with the effort and the filthy taste in his throat. He considered a whinny, for he must make some sound to alert his dam of his location, but the raptors could still be above him. Before he could cry out, he needed to survey his situation.

Shifting his weight carefully, he tested his body for damage. Aside from the scores on his neck, which did not seem to be deep or threatening, there was a twinging in his left foreleg each time he flexed his pastern. Whether it would leave him lame or not remained a mystery while he lay on his side, and so he rolled his read legs fully beneath his hindquarters, and heaved upward with all his foal’s strength.

Which was not much.

Still, a rain of debris resulted, and the wan light brightened, offering promise of freedom. Sabba lowered his neck, cringing, and brought his forelegs into action. Rocking one way and then the other, he worked upwards until, in a sudden burst of light, he was standing.

He had not, as he’d feared, been buried. The dirt and debris piled over him must have slid along with him into the hole. Now that he’d dislodged it, Sabba found room to stand, to shuffle his hooves, and to look around an assess his surroundings.

He’d landed in a sort of hollow cave, a vug in the earth lined with grass roots and varied pebbles. A rent in the ceiling suggested the place where he’d broken through, and though it allowed some sunlight to enter, the majority of the cave’s illumination came from Sabba’s right, a place where the walls bent sharply, suggesting a passage beyond.

For a long moment, he stood debating, letting his breath return to normal and allowing his heart’s beating to slow and stabilize. If his mother searched for him above, he should not move. But even if she found her way to that slashed ceiling, she could not extract him from this hole through it. Not unless he suddenly sprouted wings of his own.

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He looked to the passage, to yellowed light painting the surfaces of its wall into high relief. It was bright enough to give him hope the trek would be short. If his exit was near enough, would it not be an easy task to circle back to the place where he fell and wait for his dam?

The thought of her sweet smell, her warm body like a shield, and her wide, encouraging eyes, pressed Sabba into motion. He stepped lightly toward the cave opening, and though his foreleg continued to twinge, found the need to limp very slight. His injuries, then, seemed superficial, and with a swelling heart, he traveled toward the lighter end of the hollow chamber.

Around the bend in the walls he expected to see open grassland, but the passage twisted again. The light, which he’d taken for a sign of exit, was filtering in through another gap in the cave roof. Sabba paused in a pool of it, bathed in warmth and faced with another decision.

The tunnel continued, but it was no lighter than the place he stood. For all he knew, he could be working his way deeper into the earth, farther from his mother and the open range of his birth. There was no way to be sure, but he was certain of a few things. Firstly, he could not escape through the roof gashes, and secondly, there was nothing at all to eat in the rough earth and shriveled roots around him.

The passage was large to a foal, though he suspected a full-grown horse would not have fit so easily inside it. Its floor was rough and lumpy, however, and he could not tell if the ups and downs there were leading more toward the sky or the deep earth.

He flared his nostrils and drank in the dry scent of dust, the soft mustiness of rotting growth. A fresher swirl carried on the currents, and though he thought it might only be his fancy which made it seem to come from ahead, Sabba pricked his ears, lifted his head high, and walked on into the further passage.

As soon as he stepped out of the light, he was rewarded with a new breeze, a riffle of bright, clean air. Sabba tried a trot, found that his foreleg held. Even on the rough terrain. He’d barely left the second bend behind when the wall broke open, and daylight poured in through the gap.

Beyond the opening, however, was not the wide grassland he expected. He skidded to a halt and gazed out, blinking away more dust and trying to decipher the strange setting on the far side of the broken wall.

Oranges and reds lay in broad stripes to the sides. Even the ground, which continued in a narrow strip between high walls, carried a russet tone. Where he expected to find scrubby grass and stippled sagebrush, there grew a low, thick carpeting of some creeping vine. Boulders poked through this in places, and as he watched, a small, skinny-legged lizard skittered over one of these.

It was not his home he’d discovered. It was a different place, a red place with rocks where the bushes should have been. A place with walls he could tell already would not be climbed. A trench, leading even further from his dam.

And long before Sabba stepped out into it, he knew he was truly lost.