this obscure light
that falls from the stars
They were not strangers to foreign lands, these graceful horses with the intriguingly curved ears whose tips pulled in together, sometimes appearing to touch depending on the angle they were looked upon. One of the two was taller, but walked with a more submissive posture, head slung low and tail head down. A stallion – dark, but with little faint speckles of white hairs among his armpits, groin, muzzle and around his eyes. The other, who walked with a head held high in attentiveness, nostrils quivering as they drank in full, deep breaths of air, was a mare with four white legs and a thick white blaze on her face, the rest of her body brushed with deep, rich brown.
Of the two she was clearly the leader, the other trailing beside her but always following the steps she took and never rushing his pace so he would pass her. Their bodies were still damp with water and their hair clung to their skin, singling them out as a pair who’d just swam as many others on this very island were likely to appear as.
Suddenly, the bay and white mare came to a stop and, just as suddenly, the black (greying) stallion did too. He looked at her and then looked around them, his gaze curious but his mouth remained closed. She snorted, turning her head this way and that, scanning every inch of the wide grass clearing they’d come upon. They’d seen meadows in their travel, but never one quite so impressively massive as this. For a moment it seemed unreal, this endless stretch of sustenance laid out before them. Somewhere nearby they could hear the happy babble of a brook, muffled behind the thick, tall grass.
She moved cautiously forward and for every step she took, he took one too. Her curved ears twitched and she flicked her still-damp tail, lowering her head to take a few grateful bites. Once she’d begun to eat, the stallion did too, having waited for her to have the first bite of the meal. Their tails flicked idly, disrupting the last of the flies from their drying coats. At any disturbance the mare lifted her head, alert, and the stallion stopped eating, but kept his head low, waiting to be told they needed to run.