When she was young, and everything seemed too much, she could go out to the paddock and catch the pony, and go riding... It felt as if the horse understood her feeling of needing to get away, to go so swiftly that the wind of their passage blew away all thoughts, and the rocking motion of their galloping was all there was to feel. Fields and meadows stretched out before them, fences were left behind, nothing mattered but their united desire to run fast and far and free.
It helped. Returning more slowly, they were both calmer. The shared joy of their flight was rounded out by a shared gentling down with the grooming, and the handful of sweetcorn or crimped oats given with grateful love; before she returned to the house, to the crumpled school uniform needing to be hung up for tomorrow, the latch-key child's solitary tea, and donning the armour of a decent frock for dinner.
As an adult, with no horse, she pined for a freedom like those childhood rides. She bought a bicycle, with the idea of riding it swiftly down the country roads, but it didn't feel the same. There was no shared flight, no sense of being one with a stronger creature who could carry her away from everything. And there were too many cars on the little roads now, housing estates popping up like great unwholesome fungi in every field and meadow, sometimes men whistling and shouting from their cars as she went by. She came home tired but not made whole. The bicycle gathered dust in the garage, and her dreams were filled with horses, with flight, with unbounded skies.
It helped. Returning more slowly, they were both calmer. The shared joy of their flight was rounded out by a shared gentling down with the grooming, and the handful of sweetcorn or crimped oats given with grateful love; before she returned to the house, to the crumpled school uniform needing to be hung up for tomorrow, the latch-key child's solitary tea, and donning the armour of a decent frock for dinner.
As an adult, with no horse, she pined for a freedom like those childhood rides. She bought a bicycle, with the idea of riding it swiftly down the country roads, but it didn't feel the same. There was no shared flight, no sense of being one with a stronger creature who could carry her away from everything. And there were too many cars on the little roads now, housing estates popping up like great unwholesome fungi in every field and meadow, sometimes men whistling and shouting from their cars as she went by. She came home tired but not made whole. The bicycle gathered dust in the garage, and her dreams were filled with horses, with flight, with unbounded skies.
