The creeping vines were bitter and too hairy against his tongue. Sabba spit them out and flapped his velvet lips in consternation. He’d stepped from the cave into a narrow world, a deep cleft in the earth with sheer stone sides and a twisting, angular bottom. It was as if his path lay in only one direction, and Sabba’s certainty grew with each step that it would not take him back to his mother.

His stomach crimped around his hunger, and his tongue felt dry and lifeless. With his heart steady, the colt faced the trench before him. His belly rumbled, and his small nostrils stretched to their fullest diameter, inhaling, hoping. He risked a brief whinny, calling out once to lend his panic voice.

Nothing answered.

The day had warmed as the sun passed its zenith, but ice still threatened in his breath. Winter loomed, and Sabba knew he could not spend it alone. He could not hold here, at the mouth of the cave, and only hope to be found. He imagined there might be a way out of the trench somewhere, a rise of ground or a lowering of the high walls. All he had to do was find it. All he had to do was survive the meantime.

He forced his steps not to tremble and aimed his path directly down the center of the trench. Prancing, keeping his head up and his ears forward, Sabba trotted away from shelter and security… and inevitable starvation. He tested the air for anything palatable and listened always for a sign of life in his newly-discovered wasteland.

Each time the trench bent sharply in either direction, he told himself a way out would appear. But the crevice walls never faltered. The ground remained flat and rocky, and no breach or branching offered him an alternative route. The sun began its descent, and the shadows thrown inside the narrow space lengthened, turning a deeper shade of umber.

He saw nothing of shelter nor any sign of inhabitation beyond the skittering lizards. These quickly grew used to him. Once they’d darted behind their rocks, they would often return, flattening their wide bellies against the warm stone or bobbing their round heads as he passed as if agreeing with some unspoken conversation.

At first the colt found their jerking nods disconcerting. As the hours passed, he began to invent a soothing dialog for them.

“Is this the way out?”

Nod. Nod. Nod.

“It’s close now?”

Nod. Nod.

Sabba trotted along, letting the game lift his knees and brighten his spirit.

“Why thank you, Mr. Lizard,” he said, flicking an ear respectfully at the nearest rock. “I’ll just be on my way.”

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In answer, the flat creature bobbed merrily.

Eventually, Sabba began to tire. His hooves felt like stones at the ends of his legs, and he slowed to a brisk walk, then a slow amble. The creeping vine thinned and eventually faded, replaced by tufts of wiry grass that grew around the base of each rock. The blades were a greenish-gray color but looked less hairy. More tempting.

“Should I try some?”

Though no lizard had appeared for several strides, Sabba imagined a round head giving enthusiastic consent.

He veered from the center of the trench, approaching the nearest group of rocks. The stones had grown larger as he went, many standing higher than his knees. There were more as well, clustered tightly together now. Yet Sabba saw not one lizard perching among them.

Perhaps the sun had grown too dim for their liking. Possibly, they’d returned to their dens for the evening, to their families and their mothers who had not been lost far behind in the grassland.

“I’ll find her soon,” he told the empty stones, wishing with all his might that a lizard would appear if only to agree with him. When nothing stirred, he sagged, reached out with his long neck and lifted his lip, scenting deeply of the new sort of grass. “It will be sweet,” he declared. “Filling.”

Something buzzed sharply in answer.

Sabba jerked back, rolling his eyes and taking a sideways step away from the sound.

It quieted instantly, evaporated until the colt could believe it had only been the wind shoving at dried leaves, rattling through a withered bit of sage.

Except, there was no sage here. There was only hot stone and spiky grass, and Sabba’s belly was empty. He pawed the ground once, stepped in again, and this time, held his ground when the sound returned. He remained still and watched the clump of grass he wanted shiver as something passed behind it.

Snake.

The word formed in his mind without assistance, though he’d never seen one, and his mother’s description of the danger had been vague, many days dulled in his memory. Still, this legless creature winding in and around his grass, bending itself over and back again, could be nothing else. The rattling sound came from one end of it, and at the other, a pair of huge, slitted eyes fixed him with a menacing glare.

“I need to eat,” he told it. “There’s plenty of grass here.”

In answer, the snake loosed a long, thin, split-tipped tongue. The black appendage slid between the reptile’s lips, fluttered one leisurely and rude salute at Sabba, then vanished into the snake’s mouth again.

The colt’s belly gurgled.

The snake’s tail buzzed a warning.

Something inside Sabba snapped. There were other tufts of grass, other rocks and other chances, but who could say if there might be a snake guarding each of these? The world, it seemed, had stacked itself against him. It had taken his mother. Wounded him, dropped him, left him for dead.

But he was a Wind Singer.

Wind Singers are brave and strong.

His mother’s voice reminded him just as the snake grew tired of waiting and struck. It hurled the first third of its body at Sabba’s nose, mouth gaping to expose a pair of long, pointed teeth.

Sabba jerked up, lifting onto his hind legs before those fangs could make contact. His heart pounded inside his chest, but he was not afraid.

Wind Singers were brave.

With a piercing, if slightly squeaky, battle cry, the colt straightened his forelegs, twisted his neck so that he could stare the snake it its wicked face, and slammed his hooves down atop its overlapping body.

Again and again, Sabba rose, struck, and screamed, and each time his hooves hit their mark, he felt his own power surging beneath his speckled hide.