Spirit, the stubby, off-white gelding trotted behind his half-sister April, the tall and elegant brown and black mare who led their “herd.” She pinned her ears and bared her grass-stained teeth at him, whisking her tail to ensure he understood his place. He stopped and waited for her to squeeze her wide girth through the doorway and bend into her stall at the front.
Spirit gave his head a shake and walked towards the doorway. But he halted just at the edge of the weathered barn. He peered inside at the empty stall beside him and bent his long neck behind himself. Not a creature stirred behind him.
His companion, Darby, was missing.
Spirit had been born in this very barn while Darby looked on from the stall across from him. A small hole from a knot in the boards allowed them to grow acquainted through smells and blowing in each others’ nostrils. After Spirit’s mother returned to her home in another barn far away, Darby became a friend and mentor for Spirit and taught him about checking electric fences, breaking down gates, walking the paths in the woods, and how to best judge April’s temperaments.
Darby could do this because he was several years older than Spirit, but he was not quite old enough to be considered elderly. But now, Darby was showing his age—with a bad eye and grey whiskers.
His owner waved Spirit in but he turned. He trotted back down the worn path he’d come from, through the alleyway and cross-ties, back to the yard.
How are you? How have things been lately?
The woman’s hands tap-danced above the digital keyboard on her iPhone.
How had they been? They’d been normal. The same struggles abounded and twisted her heart like a wrench. She still didn’t sleep; she lay awake at night wondering over the day’s events and questioning how to move forward as the troubles never changed despite every one of her attempts.
Things have been going well lately! she wrote back.
Why? Because she had stopped wondering about them.
She ignored them.
She stopped noticing the wrench.
A copper-coloured horse named Darby stood in an old, unused stall. He had rich brown eyes, but one was covered in a milky, blue film with a fine line through it. With the greying of his face, his eyesight grew dimmer in that eye. He stood with his face to the wall, unmoving, aside from the expanding and contracting of his ribbed sides.
He had wandered into one of the old exterior stalls. These stalls were used decades ago when Darby was only young and the owners ran a trail-ride business and horseback-riding lessons and many more horses populated this property.
But Darby had wandered in and, with his dim eye, could find no way out. His instincts, knowing his age, simply gave him up for dead. In that dark stall with his head in the corner, he saw no hope in finding a way out. He had gotten lost and stuck, and now he resolved to slowly starve.
Meanwhile, Spirit scouted around the empty stalls until his nose poked inside one and he found the copper-coloured rump of his friend. He nuzzled his velvety lips and nostrils against the copper fur.
At first, Darby didn’t move. Then his good eye opened just a little wider. He turned his head and blew in the nostrils of his friend—the way all horses say hello.
The woman laid on her loveseat, the weight of the day’s events pressing air from her lungs. She wanted to be like steel, but flesh and soul will never be that tough. She knew she must accept that before she crumpled under the armour she’d layered over herself—both to keep herself from acknowledging the sorrow of her reality and to keep anyone else from seeing it either.
She picked up her iPhone. The bright blue made her eyes squint in the darkness. A breath trembled from her lips as she opened her messaging app. She retold all the events to her friend. No tears fell from her eyes; she still tried to hold the armour on.
Her friend shared her grief; she wept with her. She passed along courage and truth that captured every fear, anxiety, longing, and ache inside the woman. Then her friend said, “I’ll tell you this again and again, so anytime you start to forget, let me know.”
Then the tears finally flowed as the armour clanged to the ground.
The horse owner watched for the two horses—the stubby white one who had left and the copper-coloured one who never came. She wondered if she should fetch grain and leadlines to bring them back.
Then she looked up and saw the off-white one come around the corner and, at his flank, his beloved friend Darby. Spirit led his friend across the threshold of the barn. Spirit turned into his stall for the night, and Darby did as well, where there was a small hole just large enough for a horse’s muzzle between them.
We never know what one act of empathy on our part will mean in the lives of others. I love your storytelling, Lara.
Great storytelling, Lara!! 💛