Jin

Admittedly, I've hit the side of my skull with harder things than mud before. But my skull has been weathered, chipped away from weeks of trotting, begging in towns, searching in waste cans, and eroding the little cliff of dignity I'd been hanging on to. The fool I was! To engage in something as petty as a bar fight for some money. I'm not one to cause suffering to others, but much rather one to invite pain with open fore hooves, for only through pain can one put rice on the dinner table. The feeling now is not the worse I've felt, I'm certain. My left eye is exposed to the rain, swollen like a large red bean not unlike the type Mama would feed me in my foalhood, and it sees little when opened, but glimpses a glaringly orange glow that rivalled the Sun when closed. Rain, spears from the folk tales of war learnt in youth, enters the lump of soil that is my broken body, seeping into my cracks and breaking me up piece by piece, preparing my body for burial as I lie in the mud, ready to return to the Goddesses. One half of my body is in the mud, and I sputter soil and water every time I exhale. The water only seems to rise higher and the rain seems to come in harsher rivulets; It is soothingly painful, like the numbness to everything after an hour tilling the fields. I smile as I think of Mama's vivacious dancing on the days of the drought, and it brings me hope that this torrential rain isn't restricted to this faraway land; maybe the Goddesses cried with laughter too at Mama's dancing, prompting them to shower this bounty. But a prompt too late. At least Papa wouldn't be so angry.

Mama taught me that life is full of cycles, like dogs who chased their own tails. As my world darkens towards the end, my world's beginning brightens.

Ask me about anything, anything at all about my foalhood, and Mama's name would definitely be somewhere in the answer. Mama, oh mama. She was so beautiful. Her black mane would always be tied up in a ponytail to enable her to work, and her naturally grey fur shone like silver for me, though she always complained that it gave others the impression she was old. Despite our way of life, she'd play as hard as she'd work, acting many years younger when in reality her legs weren't so slender and her body wasn't so lean, at least not like the few mares I knew.

She was the brightest and liveliest firefly in the night; the lovely mockingbird in the trees that sung tirelessly, day and night; and the roaring fire that wrapped its ethereal arms around me in the evening, never tiring, never darkening. My earliest memory was with Mama, at a time when Papa thankfully ignored me most of the time. She'd rock me in a straw basket, my little hooves clutching a woollen, scratchy blanket in the cooler months as she sang me a lullaby. Always, it'd be that lullaby.

I've never forgotten the tune of that one, but the lyrics always evaded me; I can never decide whether the song was about a foreign conquest or life in the olden times. It's one of the two, I'm sure. I'd close my eyes whilst she rocked the basket, but never descending into sleep. I'd just listen on and on to Mama's warm voice, and oftentimes she'd be convinced that I was finally asleep and climb into her mattress with Papa. There were some golden times when she'd fall asleep on her own, dozing off mid-song. When my eyes squinted to see why the song suddenly stopped, I'd behold the serenity of Mama's face as she slept, which was enough to get my hyperactive self to follow suite.