Arriving in a foreign country is difficult, not only for people. Horses also need someone to help them.
He stands on the pasture fence and looks to the outside. Everything is so different here. He gave up chasing the horseflies a long time ago.
Iceland.
He thinks about his time out there, in the highlands. He’s thinking about the time he was allowed to romp around with the others. What he misses most is the vastness, the certainty that you can run as far as you want to.
Yeah, there’s plenty of weed here. His belly’s full of it. Green, lush grass grows here, in abundance. But he’d rather be at home. In Iceland. There’s only grass here. Where he comes from, there are boulders on the ground, rugged cliffs, lots of moss and smoking mountains. Everything is new here.
He knows she’ll be here soon. But he doesn’t want to admit to himself that he’s waiting for her. She’s just a kid, but he doesn’t know that much about age. He likes her, she’s calmer than the others.
Steps!
He still perceives the person out of the corner of his eye. It’s the man who brings them the hay in the box at night. Calmly he shakes his head. He is a black horse and the white strand in his mane continues to run down to his white socks. People like that.
The gate squeaks. He pulls his head up. The man comes towards him, halter in hand. Frightened, he takes refuge behind his buddy.
Where’s the girl? He’s avoiding the man, his head still high in the air. He doesn’t like people very much, and he doesn’t like men at all. It was you who separated him from his mother, held him down …
The man stretches out his hand to touch him, but he jumps back as if he had come too close to the electric fence.
Finally, the man gives up.
He’s waiting. She should have been here by now. They went riding yesterday. It was exhausting, but he likes to feel he can rely on her more and more.
He looks at her as she finally comes out on the pasture. The first steps she takes towards him, she turns away and strokes the other horses.
He comes at her from behind, slowly and carefully. He stops half a step away. Only now does she look at him. Tenderly, she talks to him.
He does not understand the words, but he senses that she likes him. Hesitantly, he sniffs her hand. This has become a ritual between them.
As if in slow motion, she pulls his halter over his head. She breathes again. She remembers too well how long it had taken her to finally put him on the halter in the beginning.
He likes her voice, the soft words she whispers to him. He is pleased. He knows that there is no point in closing himself off from the world in which he now has to live.
He is glad that there is a person who is patient with him and helps him to feel a little more at home every day.
