Ükhel and Amidral

In Ravenborough, as an Elder of eighty three summers draws her final breath, she is greeted by a sight of unfathomable beauty. He is Ükhel, Yther's mighty steed; the great white light come to guide her into the next.

His muzzle is soft, his breath warm and calming against her cheek, and his pale eyes gleam with a promise of peace. She smiles up at him, for she knows, now, that her time has come - but no longer is she afraid.

She does not hesitate as she climbs aboard his back with the ease of a strength she has not known since her youth. She threads her fingers through his silken mane, feels the power of his handsome neck beneath her hands, and as he carries her away into the unknown she does not think to look back.

On the open plains of Aeslend a herder tends his flock. He has been gone for many months, and as the days draw shorter, and the shadows ever longer, he finds himself glimpsing amid the ebbing light the form of a poorly mare.

She is ugly. Her head is slung low on a thin, spindly neck; her skin is stretched taught over every bone, ligament and tendon of her frighteningly gaunt figure. Somewhere far away, as if recalling the vague remnants of a distant dream, he hears a woman screaming. But he is not afraid. He knows her.

For she is Amidral, the dark mare of rebirth, tasked to return anew to the world that which Ükhel takes away. Though her body is frail, her yellow eyes are bright with life as she peers our at him from between the shadows. She has come to deliver him a message.

And when the herder returns home to his village he is greeted by his overjoyed wife, and the infant cries of his newborn son.