and I discovered that my castles stand
upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
Texas should have been home hours ago, but he’d fallen asleep in the warm spring sunshine. By the time he wakes up ,night has more than fallen over the rolling hills of the Field, and he is torn between going back to sleep until dawn or stumbling home in the dark. Stumbling sounds bothersome, so the bay stallion is closing his eyes when something races past him. The bay stallion is immediately awake, all traces of weariness gone as he peers through the darkness in search of whatever had sped by. He can make out the figure of another horse looking equally startled a few yards away but not the racing thing, so when the other horse heads forward Texas decides to follow, trusting that perhaps they had seen the source of the commotion.
As he comes closer he can see that that the horse he is tailing is a young mare, and she approaches a brightly colored mare that looks just winded enough to have been the one running through the Field. Her color – while strange – is nothing he’s not seen before. Horses these days keep getting more and more strange looking. Texas is bay, just bay, with silver grey in his mane from his bouts with aging and genetics. On his head, not visible in the dark or beneath his forelock are two small bumps, the first budding signs of his generals’ crown of horns. He is not entirely sure if he likes them, and debates daily on their worth.
The black mare he’s followed seems like an appropriately social creature, giggling about having been scared. Texas isn’t entirely sure what his original intentions had been – possibly to tell off the galloping mare for disturbing his rest? – but he can’t very well voice them and risk sounding like the sour-tempered old man that he often is. So he simply says “Hello,” and gives both mares a nod and a smile that while friendly, doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Rather than the expression being off-putting (as he might hope it would be) it comes off as distinctly charming, as though he is trying his very best to be polite and genial this late in the evening.
The yawn that he stifles only furthers that, and after he’s gotten his voice back from the yawn asks, “What brings you ladies out to the Field so late?”
texas
