One: The Pilot's Last Days
The moon rose to shine upon the peak of an almost deserted mountaintop, and the bleached bark of the gum trees were paled by the glow. The twisted and deformed branches reached out to the sky like the arms of the wandering dead, begging the heavens for redemption. But by the end of the night, though it would turn to the earth that had loved it so well, there would be another ghost wandering among them. For among the haunted forms of the seemingly dead and bleached trees was a horse, roaming around them like a bored dog on a chain, waiting impatiently for the end. He was pale with both age and with the light of the moon, he was blue roan though he was now very old, and lucky for it.
Now, when the end was so near and the trees seemed to reach in a bitter wind to form an archway for him, the stallion knew it was all finally ending. He had been a very lucky beast to have only been beaten and chased by man a few times throughout his years, caught once and freed once, and he had only ever killed another stallion, once. The old stallion knew he was going to die, so why not reflect on his life before the white hawk of death and joy appeared and took him away? After all, he had seen four great stallions fall, and been around to watch the fifth and last stallion give, even a son of his, a good thrashing. He had learnt of many stories, seen many things, and even in his time though man had not talked by the fire-side of the black-headed blue roan, he had been famous amongst the stallions for beating an ambitious chestnut colt, which had then moved on to sire the greatest king of the High Country….
He had not been born so far south as the Pilot though, in fact, he had been born to a herd in the Stockwhip Country at the end of the Cascades, though they had wandered often to the Suggan Buggan region or onto the Ingegoodbee Valley. His mother had been a red roan, not an uncommon sight in the land, though his sire had been black. As a result, he had been a blue coloured roan, born a smudgy brown and grey coat with dark legs and flecks, not to mention a head that was completely black. His family was one that had descended from one of the older lines of loosed horses in the Brumby country, one of an odd roan and white shade that had once pulled ploughs in the quiet lands to the far north of the world. But his family had become shorter and less stockier then their fore-bear over a few generations, and pony blood from the local stock horses had all but removed the bulkier and slab-shouldered looks of his family, yet the roan colouring had remained a key attribute in the bloodline, though black and chestnut often overcame and even bay and grey flooded the lands.
His mother had owned a family traditional that the foals were to be named for the first animals to cross their path and the most striking colour shade, already he had an elder sister that was a yearling named, Wewampangku, meaning Red Wallaby, for their sire's black colouring had not passed through the filly's genes and she had been born red roan. But by luck for the unfortunate family, the black-headed colt foal had been named whilst he'd suckled, for his mother had not seen any animals because of the winter until she'd spotted an eagle carolling above them, heading south from the main Ramshead Range where he had been searching for carrion. So the colt had been named Nhompo, black eagle, which was a reasonably good name for such a lanky looking colt.
He had grown quite swiftly and his colouring had become rich in blue, and by his first year Nhompo had dominated his siblings and been led onto the Cascades by the lead mare of the herd, a big chestnut lady that had birthed a startling young flaxen-mane filly, who would later play part as one of the many mares of the Cascades herds. But that year Nhompo remembered quite clearly, because it was the first time he was able to see the great king of the Cascades at that point in time, and indeed see the most beautiful filly amongst the herd. She was a daughter of this first real king and she was a petite little dappled grey filly that had no resemblance to her bay sire, let alone her flea-bitten grey mother, but more to a rogue stallion that had escaped man's clutches in a previous spring. Her name was Thatamuuwa, meaning "untamed white cockatoo", and she would be his first love, and indeed, he was going to have his very first memory of man that summer, and of the fear the creature's bring….
Ok, this is just a taster type thing you see, I'm going to be writting this story as one I hope to get published, so it will be in a different format to the one you will all get to read, and it will be improved later on.