Keeper-
Keeper has rather keen hearing; keen enough to pick up on his wishful murmur that the wind had almost plucked from her ears’ grasp - almost, but not quite quick enough was the wind for she still heard what he had mumbled to it. She felt that palpable sensation in him for belonging, to someone - to somewhere, and knew a little of that same sensation in her own pale dun breast where her heart beat slow and sure behind the bars of bone. To belong was as much the same as the instinct to seek out a herd, and as horses, they are given to this most basic of instincts though most see it as a simple desire now - a stepping stone to greater conquests, like positions and power. She is not sure how he sees it, except that she heard the note of longing in his gravel-slick voice and something in her answered it.
The evergreens sway in the wind, and he shifts against it and against her in their small pocket of the field. Tucked away, she thinks, as he mentions his fascination with this place of all places to be fascinated with. Her head tilts to the side, a curious expression on her face as she tries to see what it is that he sees out there amongst them all. She cannot fathom it, that zest he speaks of that seems to be out there. It is because she does not see it, none look to be zealous for the air and second chances - they sleep and snore, heads drooping low, backs slumped, limbs cocked, and none of them wiser to the goings-on in the evergreens where two horses watch them, a stallion and a mare.
“I can try,” she concedes, making no promise but this is hardly a challenge that she has to rise up to. He can see things that are not there, things that Keeper cannot see for herself and she finds the magical and the mystical in things as common as a caterpillar's hole in a leaf or a root breaking up through the dirt. She cannot see the common good in them that rest there, slumbering and lacking the life that he thinks suffuses their limbs and brains, but if he thinks it is there then it must be. Who is she to argue otherwise? She remains tucked up close to him in a companionable fashion as he thanks her and she shrugs it off. Keeper needed no mention of gratitude though she answered him with a smile and another brush of her muzzle against his neck.
“Bri.” she echoes back to him and her brain prompts her to memorize that short moniker while recognizing that she must say hers in turn. “I’m Keeper,” she says by way of honest introduction but leaves it at that. “You should come with me back to Hyaline if you think there is a zest for life here, wait until you see the life that flourishes there!” Keeper finishes with a rare sort of gusto that is not common to her, but she is energized by the mention of that place that has slowly begun to steal into her soul. It could be the lake or her red maple tree, or the trails the deer carve out of the mountainsides that Keeper tries in vain to follow. Nonetheless, if she is enamored of a place, it is that one.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless