Firah

The six month old filly was enjoying the summer months. The warmer weather and abundant food meant that the herd had plenty to forage before the chill of winter set in, and also meant that little Firah could afford to be picky about what plants she grazed. And right now, a thick cluster of sunflowers were calling her name.

Firah tossed her head and did a little jumping kick, exercising a spurt of youthful excitement before sprinting across the meadow and down past a hollow depression in the field. Muck splashed up, speckling her striped legs with mud. Ahead, the bright yellow heads of the sunflower swayed enticingly. Firah pushed forward, paying no mind to how far her spindly legs were sinking down the further she traveled across the depression. A bit of mud would help keep the biting flies at bay, after all.

Quite suddenly though, the filly's momentum slowed, and then came to a complete stop. Firah struggled to lift a foreleg that had sunk knee deep into the mud, but the thick mire clung with unyielding force to her limb. She tried another leg, but it too was held fast. In a panic, the bald-faced filly tried to jump, but only sunk deeper as a result.

"Help!" She cried out as fear begin to set in. The sunflowers that had lured her here were only a few tantalizing yards away, but they might as well have been a mile off as far as the young horse was concerned.

Brennik

'Help!' The cry of his little sister's voice stopped Brennik in his tracks. The clover leaves he'd just snipped up fell from his alabaster lips as all thought of forage left his mind. The young stallion wheeled around, blue eyes desperately searching for Firah, who he'd not strayed far from since her birth.

"Firah!" It took only seconds to spot the little filly, a near replica of himself, save for the striping and feathering on her legs. She looked to be half swallowed up by the land, as if the vegetation itself had decided to revolt and turn the table on its foragers. "Hang on Fir, I'm coming!" He whinnied as he ran, dark hooves pounding the earth with force as he rushed to be by her side. All the while, images of Ethan and Savannah cropped up in the back of his mind, and the fear of losing a second sister urged the stallion on faster.

And then he felt the wetness. An abrupt change from the drier, more solid earth and the sudden sponginess that quickly sapped the momentum from his stride. A new bolt of fear shot through him as wisdom told the brute to watch his step, and he listened to this subconscious warning. Brennik slowed his pace and stopped a dozen feet short of Firah, nostrils flaring and sides heaving. Crystal blue eyes made a quick study of the scene, and his urge to help free her soon had him circling the mudhole, trying to see if there was any drier patch that he could take to be closer to her without sinking into the trap himself. "It's okay Firah, I'm here - just try to lift one hoof out at a time, okay?"

Firah, Moonlit Moor, & Daga

"Help me, Brenn! I'm stuck!" Firah continued to cry out, not really listening to what her half-sibling was saying. When he circled in front of her, Firah tried to lunge forward to meet him, but her efforts were for naught. The mud refused to give up a single limb, and in her panic, she continued to wiggle and flail about.

Moonlit was next on the scene, pounding across the meadow to the sound of her daughter's frightened cries. "Firah!" She too tried to rush to the filly's side, but when one front foreleg sank nearly to her knee, the mare was forced to scramble back, narrowly avoiding the same fate as her child. "Just push forward, Firah - there's dry ground in front of you." Unsure what to do, but feeling her daughter's panic start to reach her, Moonlit blindly offered her advice. She circled around in front of the filly and pawed at the ground, "Just a few feet more darling, you can make it."

Not more than a minute later, Daga had arrived. The white-tail observed the situation from a further distance than his equine companions, and shivered when he saw how deeply Firah was bogged down. She was a sitting duck for predators. "I'll get Onok and warn the others." He announced, before sprinting off to find the leads and the rest of the herd.

Onok, Callaquoia, & Brennik

Onok approached the mudhole after being alerted by Daga. Like the others, he recognized the precarious situation his daughter was in, and knew they had to work quickly to free her before predators were alerted to the scene. "You're alright, Firah. Try to calm yourself, and push forward." He advised after circling the mire pit, and coming up behind the filly. He made an attempt to nudge her rump with his snout, to help push her forward, but his front hooves began to sink into the earth and the stallion was forced to back up.

Onok paced in front of Firah, trying to think rationally despite his growing worries. "Daga-" After a moment or two, the stallion nodded to the deer whilst keeping his eyes on his child, "Get with Loki and Nightshade, and patrol the area around this meadow. Brennik, join them."

"Can we scrape some of the mud away?" Callaquioa suggested as she joined the panicked group. "If we move enough back, it might help free her legs."

Firah, Moonlit Moor, & Daga

Firah tried with all her might to step forward, but the mud may as well have been solid stone around her little limbs. She simply didn't have the strength to get out of the pit. "I can't!" Her tail, now caked with mud at the bottom half, flapped helplessly behind her. "Momma, help!"

Moonlit had begun to pace, then closed in on Callaquioa's side when the other mare suggested scraping mud away. "I know my sweetie, we will get you out of here." She knickered encouragingly to her foal, then joined the younger mare in trying to scrape mud back with her hoof. She managed to pull a decent chunk away in a few good scrapes, but it seemed for every clump Moonlit removed, more mud would ooze in to fill the gap. At one point, Moonlit slipped and fell forward on her knees, and came close to getting stuck again.

After a few long minutes of this, sweat was beginning to shiny against her pale black coat. The sock on her left leg was completely obscured by muck, and her belly and sides were speckled with the stuff. And for all that, Moonlit wasn't sure she'd made much of a dent in the pit. An even more exhausted Firah had stopped struggling. Panting, Moonlit turned to Onok, desperation clear in her dark eyes, "We need to get the human's help."

Onok, Callaquoia, & Brennik

Onok had joined the mares in trying to dig Firah out of the mud, but like Moonlit Moor, no amount of effort seemed to be enough. After several minutes of tireless effort, both he and Callaquioa were speckled in grime, and an exhausted Firah had begun to run out of energy. With flaring nostrils and heaving sides, the stallion caught Moonlit's look and took in her desperate words with wary acceptance. "Alright."

His mind drifted for a moment back to the human he'd run across in his natal band, and he weighed the reaction of Enyalius and King against that of Moonlit. Though they clearly dislike the two-legged creatures, he'd never been given a reason as to why, and the human they'd encountered was sweet-voiced and about as hostile as a newborn fawn. Moonlit herself had no ill words about the bi-pedal creatures, and in fact had been given food and shelter by the male that lived in their land.

"Alright." Onok said more decisively, his mind made. "Keep digging, I'll be back as soon as I can." His voice then softened as he looked to his daughter, "Be brave, Firah. I'll return with help, and you'll be out of that mud before long." A toss of his dial was given and he reared back before plunging forward and galloping from the meadow.

At the forest edge, Brennik paused to watch his father speed away and disappear into the trees. Calla watched as well, taking just a momentary break before jumping back into the daunting task of trying to dig the filly out of the mire.