ARROW OF THE CIMARRON

Hey, look! Another chapter—and only a little over a week after posting the last one! Woo-hoo! I told ya so!

Story © unicorn-skydancer08

For many long days that crawled like worms, I was kept apart from the herd, even forced to sleep apart from them at night. Every day, my heart grew heavier. I was a vagabond, an outcast in my own family. I knew this was nothing I didn't deserve, but it still pained me all the same.

But nothing in all the world could make me feel worse than knowing I had almost killed a poor, helpless colt. As for that little colt, his pain grew worse at first, but then, very slowly, little by little, it began to ease off as his wound healed. His limp began to improve steadily, though his leg was still considerably stiff, and he still winced on occasion when he walked. His mother refused to forgive me for what I had done to her son, and I couldn't say I blamed her.

Even as the colt was making progress, my father still forbade me from joining the rest of the herd, and he showed no sign of having forgiven me. Whenever our eyes met, he would simply flatten his ears at me, and he would lash his tail in my direction as he turned away. I would just sigh and turn away myself, or bow my head so that my mane spilled down into my face, hiding my eyes.

I lost my love for running, and my once voracious appetite dwindled. Some days, I picked little more than a few meager strands of grass.

Once or twice my mother attempted to come to me, to comfort me, but my father always bolted ahead of her and refused to let her near me. It hurt me to see my father block my mother's way and whinny or snort at her. All my life, I had seen him act lovingly and respectfully toward her. My grandmother never dared attempt to cross my father's path, but she would sometimes spare me a compassionate glance, and I could never bear to look at her sweet face.

The days passed, each day seeming like an eternity for me.

Finally, one cool moonlit night, while the other horses slept close together and my father kept an extra close watch on them, while I remained a good distance from them, as always, I couldn't take it anymore. If this was the way things were going to be, I thought to myself, maybe I would be better off on my own. The other horses would certainly be better off without me, and my father would be more than glad to see the last of me. And so I decided then and there that I would run away, seek my own homeland, and start a herd all my own.

With that in mind, I promptly rose and took off at a swift gallop. Since I was moving away from the herd, not toward it, no one else bothered coming after me, let alone my father.

I galloped as long and hard as I could into the night, never once looking back. I crossed over grassy meadows and rolling hills, and pounded my way across a flat field of sagebrush. As I came to a dark cluster of pines and aspens, I stopped for a short rest, and a drink. There was a small stream of cold, clean water rushing nearby, and so I rested there on the quiet bank and drank my fill. When I was sated, I listened to the night sounds around me for another few minutes.

For one brief yet intense moment, my loneliness closed in on me, and I began to shake. I had never run away from home before. What would I do without my herd, my family? I had always dreamed of being independent, of being free and unbound to anyone or anything…but now that I was actually on my own, I began to have second thoughts.

I shook my head to snap myself out of it and stamped a forehoof on the hard earth, telling myself stubbornly this was for the best. I had run away, I said, and I was never going back.

I never could go back. I could never show my face in the herd again.

A strange noise sounded quite close by right then, making me jump a little. I didn't recognize the sound, and I didn't understand the cause of it.

It didn't sound anything like the forest. It didn't sound like any animal I was accustomed to.

Then my sharp nostrils caught a strange whiff of smoke, mingled with some other foreign smell that I couldn't identify, and my eye caught an eerie reddish-orange speck in the trees. For one alarming moment, I thought the trees had caught fire, and I nearly fled for my life on the spot.

But then something made me stop and stand still.

Rather than growing brighter, the light seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer, until I could barely see it at all anymore.

Leveling off my ears, I decided maybe I ought to check this out. So, moving slowly and quietly, I made my way through the dark, toward the trees. Had I known beforehand the consequences that would follow, I would have obeyed my first impulse as a wild horse, and run far away in the opposite direction.