He slid the heavy saddlebags off his aching back beside the low verandah of the cabin, his panting breaths lost in the mellifluous, many-voiced evening chorus that rang down from the trees while his blood pounded distantly in his ears. Stumbling over to the little brook that ran past the cabin and into the great, still lake, he lowered his muzzle and drank deeply before returning to flop down on his belly next to his saddlebags and catch his breath.

Celestia, I'm getting old.

It was a long way from Three Valley Junction, the tiny speck of a town clinging on by the side of the Mane Trunk Railway where it looped up out of Vanhoover to the pass at the northern end of the Unicorn Ranges. It used to take him two hours when he first came here on paths little better than tracks through the tall spruce forest, but today it was closer to three – and that was with the paths greatly improved. Still, in contrast to his flat in bustling, noisy Vanhoover, it was a slice of paradise that made the effort more than worthwhile.

As soon as he'd laid eyes on this spot all those years ago, the little south-facing clearing on the lakefront with the stream tumbling down the basaltic rocks to one side, he'd fallen instantly and irretrievably in love with it. The price he had paid for his ten acres of pristine forest was cheap back then – it was absolutely peanuts now – and had been amply repaid by years of family holidays under canvas on the deep, mossy grass, hiking in the woods, swimming in the lake, and laughing and singing around a campfire on the shallow, pebbly beach trying to eat badly-charred food. His lips twisted in a smile. Other things, too, when he and Rose had come here alone after the kids had left home and the nights were filled with the songs of the crickets and the sigh of the wind in the branches. That was before the hardness started in her udder, though, the dense little ball that grew and grew until it drained her body of health and vitality and finally even life itself.

It had taken the cancer only three months to consume the formerly-vivacious mare and love of his life. Three months of endless hospital visits and helpless rage at his impotence to do more than sit there and hold her hoof while the doctors cut tissue away and poured poisons into her failing body, mouthing encouraging words which neither of them believed. More than once, he'd had to check the names on the ends of the beds to reassure himself that the ghastly, stick-thin creature with hair coming out in clumps was really her. The end should have been a relief in some ways, but the next six months became a different sort of hell, trying to adjust to the gaping void that she left in his life. After forty years, their lives had become so intertwined that he found himself doing things, saying things, to the same cues as always, but now those automatic little rituals were left incomplete, unfulfilled, tainted by a sense of utter wrongness because she wasn't there. His mood was not helped by the darkness of the winter which bookended his dreary days in the office, going through the motions until he could finally retire, and in many ways it mirrored the symbolic, crushing bleakness in his soul. Of course, the kids had tried their best to help him, but they had their own families to attend to now.

It had been this place which had drawn him out of himself again. Drawn back by something he couldn't quite explain, maybe a need to touch a place where he and Rose had shared so much, he had set off far too early in the spring when snow still capped the surrounding peaks and the brook brimmed full from the burgeoning meltwater. Standing on this spot and looking around, he felt a sense of belonging, a sense of peace that he hadn't felt for such a long time, and he knew that, in time, he could be happy here again.

That seed of an idea had quickly germinated, and, after arranging for a delivery of timber and supplies from the far end of the lake to be brought up by boat, he had collected his gold watch and pension from the office, gathered up some rudimentary tools, and set to work building the cabin which now sat behind him. The physical labour had been a tremendous strain for his unaccustomed, office-weakened limbs, but he was ridiculously proud of the snug little hideaway when it was completed. The kids had been relieved to see him when he finally went back to the city nearly six weeks later, but some jealous instinct made him keep the secret of the cabin to himself, and they had been too grateful for his reappearance, thinner, fitter, and more at peace, to enquire too closely.

With a loud sigh, he levered himself up onto his hooves, cracking his fetlocks loudly, and went to see how the cabin had survived the winter. Hooking back the shutters to admit the evening light that was glowing golden across the lake, he hauled his week's supplies inside and started chasing out the spiders and cleaning the place up.

An hour's work had the worst of it done, and after he'd slung his bedroll over the slatted frame in the corner there was time to cook a simple meal on the stone hearth and take it down to beach, where he could read while eating. He'd also re-discovered the case of elderberry gin that he'd made a couple of years ago, and some cautious sampling showed that it was still good.

At length the final vestiges of the sunset faded until his nose was practically pressed against the page. The dim glow of the emerging stars and half-crescent moon was no substitute for the sun's light and the gin had been tested to destruction so, with a yawn, he slid a twig into his book as a marker and gathered up the detritus of his evening to take back inside.

Fumbling around in the kitchen area, he found the stub of a candle still in the old glass lamp and rummaged in his saddlebags for a dry book of matches. Fiddling one out of the box, he grasped it in his teeth and dragged it sharply over the side of the box. There was the sharp hiss and flare of ignition and the familiar, sulphurous scent and heat in his nostrils as he carefully applied the flame to the wick. After a moment it caught and the light began to grow and strengthen, and so he dropped the match into the hearth where it could burn out safely and carefully hoisted the lamp up into the rafters where its flickering light could reach the whole room.

Snorting to clear his nostrils, he ambled outside again and down to the waterfront, where he closed his eyes and took deep, soothing breaths of the fresh, crisp air. The night was quiet, just the whisper of a gentle breeze through the treetops that didn't make it down to ground level and the quiet lapping of the water. It was a bit early for insects, which meant no crickets – but it also meant no mosquitoes, either. He would have expected the owls to be hunting, though-

An abrupt impact on his hindquarters lifted him off his hooves, pitching him onto his shoulder and knocking the breath out of him, but almost immediately the sudden, terrible pain in his belly drove the shocked incomprehension out of his mind. His eyes flew open and his hooves thrashed desperately, churning at the little pebbles, but all he could see was darkness, not even the stars or moon or the light of the lamp in the cabin. Sledgehammer blows rained down on his ribs with sickening crunches and he threw his head back, desperate to scream, but his winded and abused body could only make a sort of agonised hiss which drew a stunning cuff across his cheek. No, no, no, stop, make it stop, oh Celestia, save me-

But the only answer to his desperate prayers was a further sharp twist to the fires of agony in his belly. His head reeling and woozy, realisation dawned as he felt an awful pressure around his throat, and suddenly the pain was numbed as if by a switch. Through rapidly-greying vision, he saw the little pebbles of the beach slide past the end of his nose, and almost smiled as the rasp of their motion came distantly to his ears, as if through a long tunnel.

I'm coming, he thought. Rosebud.