Insurmountable odds

To triumph over darkness, you must first stand against it. ~ unknown

Strange, the view from here
Words we spoke, forgotten at the time
Now replay in my mind
What went wrong, what was right
Looking back, I never was there for you
You didn't say, but I know it's true
I can't find the real world alone
Every time I think I've won
I hear your voice inside, questioning
Where have you gone
Can't you remember feeling so alone
You always had the anwer that I could not see
I can't find the real world alone
~Queensryche

Me too had become the constant shadow of his hero Rusty, so it was no surprise when he decided he would go with the drover scouting for wild stock. There was both amusement and bit of heartache when I offered a farewell embrace that he shrugged away from. My little boy was growing more and more into a man. The merriment was that I knew one day, the wrap of feminine arms wouldn't hold the same shun. I checked the packs over and went back to check them again and again. I didn't want them to go and this odd obsessive behaviour kept wanting to make sure they had everything they would need or find reason perhaps for them not to. I didn't watch them ride off along the lanes and out onto the plains. I couldn't, instead I busied myself among the pens.

The two foals that Holo had sired were coming along well. It would be up to Fonce to name them but the ebon male that had been born the night of the sleens, I tended to call Tsk. It would at least give a sound to training the creature to come when summoned. The coppery red sorrel somehow always answered to pssst ... of all things. I knew they could one day be mounts for the Ubar so they were never spoiled but their survival of insurmountable odds during their births and the travels along the trail gave them priviledge. I whispered across the grasses, a silent prayer that he be like those two young colts .. able to endure, live and thrive.

My own small herd was growing well. There was a dark roan male I had named Vareem and a blue gray female that was named Alta though she was affectionately called None, both given to me by Rusty. Alta .. aka None, just had an attitude about her that said .. don't start none and there won't be none. Later that nickname would be more apropo in trying to breed her. Key word there was .. trying. Legends say that the kaiila conceived of the high winds capture its speed. When I look at these two, I can imagine them racing across the prairie as sleek and as swift as the breeze itself.

I don't know if it was a gift gone wrong, a cruel jest or simply one of those "you ain't gonna believe this" circumstances but the beast that Vao had given me was one like I'd never encountered before. Talk about having a mind of one's own! I would look up expecting to see the blue gray male pawing at the ground, snuffing out something from a tuft of grass somewhere but the beast would just be gone. The first excursions of trying to find the missing animal would be searching out over the plains before I finally figured out, he thought he belonged among the Tribe. Wonder where he got those kinds of ideas? For the next hand or so, I would wander through the lines of wagons, looking down this row and peeping under that row yelling ... hey Yabbott!!!, only to find him at the main fires ... sitting on the gray furs as if he were the Ubar or having actually half climbed someone's wagon platform to munch dried herbs they had hanging. Good skies, I'd yank at his mane and try to drag him back down to the pens simply to look up and find him gone again. Oh just wait until Vao returns again. I've stacked a whole pile of copper pots up next to my wagon flap with his name on them.

Each day I watched for the return of our prodigal sons, with hope, with faith though dusk would eventually settle around my shoulders without them. Perhaps it was all merely dominoes stacked in lines and patience needed until they toppled back where they began.

Boreas and his brother winds were often imagined as horse-shaped gods. An old Greek folk belief was that the winds Boreas and Zephyros would sweep down upon the mares in early spring and fertilize them in the shape of wind-formed stallions. The horses born from these couplings were the swiftest and finest of their kind
~snagged without permission from Lubricious Cerebration. You want it back girl? Come get it muahhaha er I mean Thank You ravenmun