In the doorway stood a unicorn mare every bit as tall and fit, but more heavily built and at least a decade younger. Her claret coat was short and weathered. A tall, stiff reddish ruff ran down the back of her neck, more like a true mane than the head-of-hair most ponies sported. Her aqua eyes were strangely melancholy; a scar ran above and below one of them, though the damage did not seem to extend to the eyeball itself. Most of all, though, it was the alicorn that drew one's attention: ragged and ugly, more than half its length simply gone, jagged keratin scabbing over what otherwise would be exposed bone and nerve tissue.