Common

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity... "

"...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Watching Solomon’s reaction to her herds would have left an amused smirk on her lips if horses were able. Instead, Darwin blinked her amber eyes and let out a raspy-sounding breath; a quiet sort of laugh that wasn’t really intended to make fun of him… At least, not maliciously.

“Do you follow fish around often?”

“Why, of course! How else does anyone learn anything about the world otherwise? Watching fish swim, deer play, wolves run… it’s all part of the great mystery laid out before us to solve.”

She might’ve been a little poetic there, at the end, but the point was made. The lavender mare had little interest in whiling her days away like a beach babe, concerned with her coat or how many enemies she vanquished. To her, her only enemy was time. Eventually, she would become too old and frail to run with the deer or swim with the dolphins. But even in her future death there would be beauty!

Darwin let Neala respond first to Solomon’s offer. She flicked her tail, the silver strands tangling around her dark-violet-gray hocks.

“Don’t have anywhere else to go,’ she acknowledged, but she didn’t add in that she likely didn’t have a choice because it didn’t seem necessary. Solomon wanted her for status or reproduction--likely both--and Darwin could use a base to conduct her studies from. Besides, she was curious about the Cove and whether the wildlife was out and about there more than here. Poor girl, going from winter to winter x1000.

“I look forward to it, Solomon! On your lead.”

With that said, the mare turned to point herself North, her hooves shuffling in the snow. She assumed that Neala would speak up if she didn’t think she could make the trip. Hopefully it wasn’t that far a swim either way.

DARWIN | | | | | | | |