"Over Great Lakes she whispers, over townships she roars. When she finally hits home I'll be there at the door."
“Anyone who lives in the desert will tell you, she is not what she seems. To some, she is unsurvivable, unforgiving. They say she is devoid of life, disregards reason and acts upon insanity. Others believe her to be hiding a great secret, a treasure trove simply waiting to be stumbled upon by the right person. I, however, believe none of this. To me, she is only one thing, something so simply that generations have passed her by and forgotten. To me, she is home. I know these rocks, the sand, the smell of the night and the sound of the day. I know the feeling of sunlight so achingly hot you believe you will never find relief, and I know the longing of the stars, their impossible wish to rejoin the sand once more. I have spoken to rattlesnakes and danced with the wind, and to me, that is home.”
I still remember the first time I saw trees. I was little more than a yearling, and the fact that large, green, living things existed on this planet surprised me. It was only later I learned they would not attack me, regardless of how I provoked them. My mother, and later the one who smelled of moonlight were always content to let me explore as I would, learning about what was dangerous and what was not I the process. And this was my life, amongst the rocks and the trees, the sand and the wind, learning what it meant to be a mustang. For the most part, it was relatively normal. The most dramatic part in my life was the death of my mother, after I had seen each season once. I was able to feed myself at that point, so I suppose it didn’t really matter. Aside from my heart, which ached in my chest. I honestly thought it was going to break, to simply stop working one day. I fell behind the herd at that summer, and I would’ve died if not another herd, and with it the moonlit grey mare who changed my life, had not picked me up. Yet pick me up they did, and the mare became a sort of surrogate mother for me. And so I spent the next four years with the herd, and although I was little more than a foal myself, I raised my own foal, with the help of the grey, of course. And this was life, simple, sweet and with little to worry about, aside from where we would eat and drink next, where we and our foals would be safe from predators and where we could comfortably relax. Occasionally the band stallion, a small buckskin, would drive us from one end of the territory to the other, simply to prove his dominance to his mares, and we quietly accepted it, moving swift and silent across the rock-spotted terrain. It was during one of these dominance driven runs across our land that everything changed.
There had been stories circulating of metal beasts that would trap mustangs, eating them and their herds alive. Those horses never returned. A few lucky horses here and there would outrun the loud, whirring creatures, but it was rare that an entire herd escaped. Yet is somehow seemed to be simply a myth, an idea that circulated the desert but never came to any truth. After all, horses were lost all the time, in the desert, whether it be to starvations, another stallion or a predator. So when we heard that sound, the distinct, beating of metallic wings through a clear blue horizon, the sound we had been warned of as foals, most of us did not recognize it. Perhaps we made it easier for the sound to hunt as, as we were already running, and we had been for some time, simply at the whim of the buckskin stallion. Most of us were tired, the herd spread flat out, the lead mare at the head, directing us. As soon as we realized we were being hunted by the strange, echoing sound, we lost formation, bunching and splitting as we panicked. I still can’t get the screams of terror and the stench of fear seeping into my nostrils out of my head. The creature seemed to be driving us towards the mouth of a small canyon, and I could sense the herd’s fear, for if we were trapped, our greatest advantage, that being our speed and ability to run, would be compromised, and we would be left only to attempt to fight, or die.
Glancing around, panicked, I sought out the familiar form of the grey mare and surged forwards, coming to run beside her. I feared not for my slender, palomino colt, for he had departed from the herd earlier in the season, when his hormones drove him into biting the band stallion a little too hard. That, at least, was some consolation. As our hooves churned up massive amounts of dust that infiltrated our lungs and tickled our nostrils, we had no choice but to funnel into the steep, narrow walls of the canyon. The reddish rock towed high above our heads, and the temperature dropped by a few degrees. Yet I was running hot, nostrils flared, eyes rolled white, and mane whipping against my face. It was a short run at full tilt before the end of the canyon loomed up out of the dust, halting us in our tracks. We turned as one, hooves skittering on the loose gravel. Yet just as we were to turn back, we realized there was something halting us, a thing that smelled of nothing like home, of dead trees and something I could not identify. The herd pooled, attempting to move left or right, yet we were blocked by the nameless barrier and the canyon wall. A daring foal took a few leaps up the side of the wall, her little hooves small enough to catch the slight edges of the rocks. Yet with the roaring of the monster above, and the cries of her mother below, it was not long before she once more had all four feet firmly on the ground. I reared up, heaving my hooves against the dead wood corralling us, and while the post shuddered, it did not budge. As I prepared to launch yet another assault, the dust around the mouth of the canyon was settling, and from if came faceless grey shapes, walking on two legs towards us. Fear shot through me, and I skittered back from the barrier to stand with the grey mare, my muzzle on her flank, too frightened to be loud.
This is the page for Lichenfeather's 2015 Mustang Makeover Entry, hosted by Cottonwood Wild Horse Ranch.
