Sunrise light glazed the oblong cobbles along the north bank of the River Clyde. The thump of music from a barge-turned nightclub had ended hours earlier. Only the river–winding between stark industrial buildings on the south bank and condominiums on the right–remained. The river, silence, and the morning chill.
And a white stallion’s hunger.
He was not pure-white: rather a cobby piebald with a black face and a mostly-white body, more black spotting his legs, streaking his mane and tail and his heavy feathers. The red light scraped across the stones stained his coat also, turning blue eyes unearthly. His hooves were unshod, though old nail-holes could be seen around their fringes should one observe with care.
The stallion stood beneath a bridge so low that if he raised his head, he would strike it on stones–a human of average height could have laid hands on the arch–and he cropped small white flowers of hairy bitter cress from between the stones. Prehensile lips tugged the plants loose, his teeth grinding them to gritty pulp, roots and sand and all.
