Yendlon, spirit pony

The great snorting stallion turned to Yendlon and said: Manhood is soon upon you, and you must leave the herd or I will smite you with my flashing hooves.
Yendlon bit at the air and ducked into a fighting crouch, but the stallion fell upon him and chased him from the valley of his birth. The young pony took to wandering alone, his gray hide lashed by the wind and the rain as he climbed ever higher into the mountains that birth the sun. Soon, the grasses stopped growing and he searched in vain for even the smallest clump of clover.
Let someone chase me out of here, Yendlon thought as he walked among the craggy peaks. The winter was hard, and long; he ate moss and shivered at night under rock outcroppings as the snows piled up and hid even the hidden grasses.

Just as he was beginning to forget the meaning of warmth, the snows stopped falling, the sun leaped once more into the higher heavens, and the land erupted in pockets of lush green. The pony feasted on herb and clover, grasses clumped and loose. His ribs vanished behind thick layers of muscle and his pelt shone as if with an inner light.
For many seasons, Yendlon roamed the mountains, alone.
I shall look once more upon the valley whence I am come, Yendlon said to himself as he was eating the fresh grasses of Spring. He picked his way carefully along the rocks, running when footing allowed, and finally mounted a spire that afforded him a view of his ancestral herd.
He gazed down upon them with herb-sharpened eyes, thinking: Their numbers are many and the stallion looks weak, but I belong here, among the rocks and the dizzying heights.

Down in the valley, two mares looked up from a mound of sweet thick grasses and spied in the distance a lone horse standing.
See there, said the first, a horse perched upon the mountain.
Yes, said the second, I see him and recognize his shape. I knew his mother, whose son has grown large, and strong.
Soon enough, some of the other mares glanced up at Yendlon's gleaming mane and cast their eyes upon his muscle-bound flanks and his nostrils thick with morning air. They neighed to him, and whinnied with supplicating tones, but the solitary pony shook his head at them, and bowed low to the ground. He took one step, and then another, and was gone.
That night, the pony named Yendlon climbed the last peak of the last height and merged with the bright lights of the inky firmament. The twin maidens who forever stand guard at the entrance to Eternity placed his stars in the eastern sky, to hearken the end of winter's icy grasp.

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