Mossfire soared through the jetstream until he arrived at the Trap, making a clean, instinctive exit out of the jetstream. He dropped down on a patch of moss, spreading his wooden wings wide. A few birds came to land on him, and he made the Trap his home.

Mossfire never had a mare to feed him milk, so he weaned himself, grazing on grass in clearings. He was six moons old now, at about the age that normal pegasi would be weaned. He would wander the Trap every day, finding good places to graze, and he'd settle in some hollow log every night. He occasionally strayed to the borders of Snow Herd lands, become more of a local legend than his mom had been. He was called the Wooden Pegasus.

Ashfeather was a weanling in Snow Herd. Her dam was a mare named Grasscloud, her sire was the overstallion, Coldwing, and she liked to play with other weanlings. One day, she and her best friends, Stormflight and Graystripe, decided to play a prank on Coldwing. They found some red berries in the woods, and, laughing, put them in a patch of grass reserved for Coldwing, hiding them in a way that they were sure that he would eat them. "This'll be our best prank yet," Ashfeather said to her friends. They watched in excitement as Coldwing ate in his special patch. They saw the red juice on his muzzle, and they also saw when Coldwing started to collapse, shaking, in the throes of death. Grasscloud came up to Ashfeather, shaking her wings in anger. She knew her filly's pranks when she saw them.

"What have you done?" Grasscloud said.

"We fed Coldwing some berries, hoping he would taste the bitterness."

"You did more than that, you awful filly. You fed Coldwing deathberries. You killed your sire."

"No!"

"You are banished from your herd, Ashfeather, along with your friends." In anger, Grasscloud walked away. Ashfeather and her friends, left with no choice, flew off to the Trap.

Mossfire watched them come, giddy with excitement. He could start his own herd now.