Work Text:
Disclaimer: Black Beauty and the characters who appear here or are mentioned are the original creations of Anna Sewell. They are not mine.
Written for redgear for New Year Resolutions 2015
"Of Green Meadows and Crab Apples" by Karrenia_rune
My friends, and I heartily mean the term, in the sense that they are dear to me; once told me that in my recent experience of the world outside the green meadows where I spent my youth, was not as unkind as I had long believed it to be.
And when I was old enough to be sold off from one master to another and then another until I hardly knew how long I would be at one place before being sent on to the next, and so it went in an endless cycle.
It was only by good fortune and sheer comingling of our disparate fates that brought into the company of Beauty and then Merry.
They were perhaps better friends to me than I shall ever be to them, but through them and through one of the kindest and most patient of humans that I slowly made the transformation of years of learned harsh behaviors and attitudes around men and other horses.
My name is Ginger, and perhaps what the old wives’ tale is true that a fiery coloring meant a fiery temper to match. Changing the acquired habits of a lifetime is not easy. To say that we are all creatures of habit; I find this is a saying that is all too apt for the position that I find myself in.
I must bear up, I must change, for my new owner is a kind, gentle, and patient man, and he bears up remarkably well under my temperament and fits of distemper. He gives me sweet-smelling hay, allows me free reign of the paddock.
I recall the times when I was with Merry and Beauty, Merry, being small and amiable said he much enjoyed the attention and brief company of small children when they were wont to amble about the green meadows on his back. I had thought it mere fancy, or something that I would scorn, now, I figure he was just expressing joy in the moment.
He tells me that I have been cruelly mistreated and that all I require to break me of those bad habits, such as bucking and rearing and biting, etc., is merely time and understanding.
He is as good as his word, and the place he took too has everything that a horse could ask for and more. If I had not known that such places existed, I might have wept and bit my own flank just to prove that it was not a dream or a hallucination brought on by too much exposure to the heat of a summer day, and dehydration.
I flick my ears to discourage the flies that buzz around my head and amble down the edge of the paddock fence, to watch as he goes about the business of maintaining the farm, pitching hay on a growing stack and whistling a pleasant tune under his breath.
I give a happy snort and he turns and regards me with a smile. Humans are curious creatures, contrary, too, some good, some bad, some merely misguided and foolish, and as I mentioned earlier I’ve have had the misfortune of encountering any and all in between. Then again, I suppose much could be said about horses, too.
There is a tree across the way that bears crab apples in abundances; I think I shall have one. Not too much, just a few, I think.