It was clearly a thing of wonder to think of something such as true, fettered, bridled, burdened, captivity. Even as she closes her eyes and basks in the thought of it, the itch comes to remind her that all the benefits were always bound to negatives. He interrupts the discomfort with his words of a new world, of a world that had nothing to do with obligation, of unchosen mates, of two-legged pawing even in the most pleasant ways, of striving in circles when the horizon should have drawn her attention instead. When he mentions the bridle and saddle she referenced, she shakes her head, the delicate and refined thing is shaken so that the metal clinks and clacks and jangles.

The bit is the worst of it, her tongue manipulating it until it cannot without hurting her. She instinctively steps back at the sensation as it grows prominent in her mind. She listens, though. She hears his promise of a new world and the advances they’d give above returning from whence she escaped. He eyes her, though, and suddenly there is that fire in her eyes again. She cannot see well enough in the night to determine disdain from pity and she shuttles herself up onto the shore of the waters to scratch at her bound head and cheek and ears. She wants that world he mentions in earnest and it makes her forget that her mother always warned to let another make rid of the bridle - humans if best, another horse if the worst should come.

"Give me my head back to me and I will give you anything you ask," she says in desperation, "it bruises my tongue and makes grazing hard where it clacks my teeth." She had never fretted it before, but his stories feed the wildness that they had attempted to harness and tame. First one leg, then the other, scraping at her own cheeks, she tries again - going even onto her knees to scrape her lovely face into the earth. "I cannot be rid of it, I shan’t ever be rid of it!"

It is frustration, desperation, and the fire he fanned in the race now engulfs her senses so that the only thing she can think of is how he seemed when they raced and how she wished that she had such freedom herself.