and I discovered that my castles stand
upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
The colt seems curious, but his questions aren’t as numerous as those of most children, and Texas decides that perhaps he’s found one of the rare good children. They do exist (he had been one himself, obviously) but they are so often out shadowed by their chatty, talkative peers that Texas tends to avoid them entirely. This one though, he’s almost like an adult horse. Well, he’s small, but if Texas squints he could be a fully grown pony.
“We’re acquaintances.” He replies, “We know a little about each other, but nothing especially important. ” Texas prefers to keep most others in the acquaintance category, but this colt is fun to look at and less bothersome than he’d expected, so perhaps they’ll eventually settle into the next most populous of Texas’ social networks – The Tolerables.
“Sometimes Mothers lie,” says the bay stallion, shrugging his shoulders. “Everyone lies, really. You’ve just got to get used to it.” Sugar-coating life keeps the weak weak, but Texas is willing to bet that along with his other positive qualities, this small child can deal with the truth. Glancing down, it’s all to easy to read the emotions playing out on the colorful colt’s face. Texas has forgotten what they feel like, but he knows that he’d felt them before, in a situation similar to the one that the colt is in now.
“My Mother left me here, yeah.” There is no hurt in his own dark eyes; there’s very little in the nonchalant shrug that he offers with the words. “But that was a long time ago, and I had to learn to get along without her.” The questions are getting a little too frequent, but there’s a stick poking against his ear that promises to itch if he pulls his head out of the bush quickly, so he makes the decisions to tolerate them for the time being. “You could stay here if you want, I suppose. But it gets a lot colder at night, if I remember right.”
After that he falls quiet for a moment, and it seems as though he’s content to let the boy suffer through the night – and other nights afterward. It would build character, he knows, but perhaps it doesn’t have to, and least not for Below. “Or you could come stay where I live, in the Falls. It’s warmer and there’s at least a few more horses there than there are here.” Very few more, but three is better than the utter lack of permanent population there is in the Adoption Den.
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