A mare to keep

Hark, another morning blooms in a forest without trees. I stretch my grimy hands out to the sides as the scintillating light invades my ramshackle shack. I take a second to absorb the overt silence and climb from my bed fashioned from old newspaper and a tarnished, aged mattress.

I strain my weary knees as I climb from the tortuous bunk and push the crude shape of wood out of the way.

I feel an enticing breeze, it entices me back inside, but there is one other I must attend to. I amble at a rather leisurely pace over the crest of the hill I have adopted as my homestead.

Once clear of the verdant veil I am able to see my only friend in my ever darkening, pitiless existence. I would forget my own head it if weren’t securely screwed in place. I pull my raggedy jean pockets out before I realise my blunder.

My relatively warm shack beckons me once more. I stop in my tracks after only catching a brief glimpse of my beloved friend. She is a quiet soul, the strong silent type. We get along famously. I reach the door of oddly shaped wood and flick it aside. I wonder through the cosy innards before my hand feels upon the small hemp sack I seek. I hook the svelte strap over my index and ring fingers and once more set about my morning report.

I climb over the steep verge and take a moment to admire the idyllic wasteland that surrounds my humble holdings. Here is dearth of life, barring me and my beloved friend, there is hardly any greenery left beyond the smoking fires that continue to billow off in the distorted reaches of my vision. I jog meagrely for my legs are busted and worn from the pure struggle for survival. As soon as I see her luxurious mane and calm expression, my own heart’s candent fire ceases.

My mind swarms with worry and my eyes dare not stop their darting lest I be surprised once again. Every morning I assure myself that my luck will run out eventually. I put forward my open palm and present my sweetest equine friend with a couple of sugar cubes. Her muzzle can’t really smile to me but I know she appreciates the thought. She licks my palm despite how filthy my hands are and quickly necks the pair of sugar cubes.

I place the tips of my fingers carefully on her snout and smile warmly. This is the same routine as always, it plays out the same way every day.

She doesn’t ask for much. I provide a pail of water for her thirst and caring ear for her worries. She used to confide in me a lot but recently she had become very secretive. After most of my failing race fell ill from a deadly new cancer treatment, survivors are few and far between. I crave the companionship the mare grants me, she is the only thing keeping me sane.

When she is ill, I focus on how to heal her. When she is hungry I find the food to satisfy her. She asks for so little, when in return she gives so much. I know I am overstepping a rule I have literally etched into stone, but I sneak another sugar cube to her and pet her smooth muzzle. “That’s a special treat, little missy. I don’t know if you know this, but it’s been a year since we first met. I’ll run out of these if I treat you good every day.”

She scoffs the final offering and flutters her ears as if there is danger close by. “Don’t guzzle them down so quick, Applejack, You know how much you complain when you get indigestion.”

Her pale orange ears prick up to my jesting. She bows her head over the stable door and looks up to me with eyes as big as dinner plates. “You’re going to put that bridle on me again, aren’t you?” She sighs.

I place both of my grubby paws under her cheeks and rub them furiously. “It’s a necessary evil, I’m afraid.”

Once more my appetite has emptied the parlour, rather old munitions crate, of food. I stay out in the back of beyond because the towns and cities attract them like bees to honey. By ‘them’, I mean the disfigured remnants that were ‘lucky’ enough to survive the necrosis caused by the magical mystery cure. I open the stable door with the slide of the bolt and allow the door to open.

Applejack wastes no time rushing into the inclement breeze. She immediately turns tail and runs for her abode when I return with a depressingly small carrot and the bridle she fears. My beloved friend is such a timid creature. As she nearly knocks me for six with her backward bucking hooves, I see her odd painted flank.

We rarely have time to discuss our histories. As soon as chance came to be, I would regale her with my lame, servile existence, and she would laugh.  How she would laugh, it would make a refreshing change from her constant sulking. She stares disdainfully at the blockade in front of her, affronting her cowardice.

I pass my grubby mitt over her blatant tattoo of an orchard apple tree before I continue to stroke her along the back until I am in line with her beautiful emerald eyes once more.

She sniffs hard the air. “What’s the matter AJ? Is there something out there?” I fearfully ask.

As she worriedly turns her head and in turn forces my gaze to follow, she snatches the tiny carrot from my lose grip and scarfs it down without taking a single bite.

It would have seemed as if fate had brought us together for we both had lost all of our friends and all of our kin.

One year since, I was completely alone. I travelled to only the noise of my whistling and the occasional anguished cry or howl of the corrupted as they would prowl around. I was at my wit’s end when I met a shivering heap of oddly coloured pony. From that moment on, we relied on one another. I provide her with food and shelter whilst she keeps my mind in check. I was never really sure why she never ran away. Perhaps she was just as scared as me.

I go to embrace her muzzle before she races away from me, towards my ramshackle shack. I fear sometimes she might spook and send me into the clutches of the damned victims of the miracle cure. In a way, it is a blessing that we have both escaped the ties that once bound us. Carrying baggage around in a world where we much travel light is a foolish notion.

I do no run as I pursue my flighty friend or she will bolt from me again. I find her greedily snacking on the thickets of thistles that sprout from the musty cracked window to my shack. I have to pry her from the treats; I have no record of her medical history. If she suffered from laminitis, my archaic form of transport would be all but ruined.

She didn’t appreciate my rude conduct. “Do you have to be quite so rash?” She whines.

I look for a brief lapse of concentration and find it. I lasso the reins over her muzzle and position the bit next to her chattering teeth. It is indeed cold. I fold my arms and foolishly let the main headpiece plummet to the crisp summit of autumn leaves. I shiver for a moment before my beloved friend cottons on to the situation.

She dutifully bows her head down and collects the strewn out bridle from the leaf litter. She is probably under the false impression that I am out to scour the sweetshops for her sugar cubes. I think to myself. ‘She can keep on dreaming’.

She tries to speak with the bittersweet bit still caught in her teeth. “Tho, where are we going?”

I relieve her of the burden and slide my thumb to the back of her gum. She opens her mouth and the rest is the same as usual. Once tacked-up I lead her to what is left of a fence, merely a post really, and tether her to it. I know she is not some stupid mindless beast, but I know too well that she might dash away if so much as a raindrop falls on her twitching snout.

In this new world supplies are scarce. I am still searching for a saddle. For some reason I still believe our friendship goes beyond a symbiotic dependence on one another.

I fasten the cuffs on my denim-wool blend jacket and pace toward her fidgety face. I lean in to kiss her but she has seen me try this before. She veers away and leaves me to flounder in a shallow puddle of muck. I’m not sure, but I believe this setting was used for farming before the miracle cure cleared hospitals and culled entire countries.

She sniggers as she returns. She winks, hiding her majestic emerald eye. “Pffa, I hate the taste of this darn thing. So, I assume you have consumed everything edible. I wouldn’t be too shocked if I found that mattress to have a bite taken out of it. Where to, boss?”

I slip on the first strut of the destroyed fence section. She giggles but hides it quickly as I stare daggers back at her. I hate losing. On my third attempt I wobble at the top of the post before swinging my leg over her broad back and fetching the reins up.

My hiking boots were hardly adequate for riding but I planned on tethering her somewhere clear of the sticky flypaper city lest she provide a buffet for the screaming public.

I take a second just to get comfortable and bring my heels into her sides. “Ah, you know me so well. You know, four year old mattress has an acquired taste.”

She shoots around in a circle at first before plunging her best hoof forward into the mucky slush. She struggles a moment and panics insanely until she bombs it down the side of the steep verdant slope.

Soon we join a quaint dirt track and follow it to the very bottom of the hill. We round a tight bend in the trail and I am nearly thrown off of my seat. Luckily, I can thoroughly rely on my skittish, petty steed. Applejack has never let me down before. The noble creature has a way of negotiating the steep angles and perilous drops that pockmark our wonted foraging route.

The town comes into view and the both of us are under no illusion of banquets or endless a la cart dinners. I happen upon a small copse in clear view of the town in disrepair and slow her blistering canter to a gentle sitting trot. Riding Applejack was unlike any mount I had ever tried before. She controls herself and has an amazing ability to warn me of impending stray branches before even I see them.

I dismount her among the trees and sling the reins over her snout. I secure her to a suitable tree and blow a kiss to her as I vanish off into the sombre town beyond.