A Boy And His Pony

• Naomi Luo, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2017

There was something exhilarating in the way a person worked with a beast to form a perfect machine. The measured rhythm of moving muscle, the heartbeats and breath in sync, the smooth bounds and leaps that far surpassed what they could have done on their own. Together like this, he just wanted to melt into the wind, and it was hard for Hector to imagine stopping.
He stopped anyway.
His horse’s reins trailed as Hector stepped down and looked up, out over the landscape of scraggly plants and windswept hills. The heather season was ending, and the indescribable shades of purple were fading into brown. He was at least glad to have seen the carpets of flowers in full bloom, one last bittersweet memory of beauty.
He never wanted to go.
It was here in the mountain air and on the Scotland moors with his pony that he would always feel free and at home. Hector wondered if there was a way to hold this part of himself close, to never lose his origins. Would shouting his name here at the top of the world imprint this moment on his soul and in turn on the hearts of the mountains?
He didn’t try.
Even as a trail of crushed stems and broken buds followed Hector’s footsteps, his pony seemed to glide over the tops of the groundcover, its long legs hardly leaving a trace. One last time, climbing into the saddle, being a part of this organism which could fly. Back over stiles and fences and gates, past paddocks and fields, away from the wild charm of country Scotland.
He left.
It was not his decision; it was his duty. To be a breadwinner, to make his fortune and to bring honour to his family. Hector tried to reason that he had no choice but to leave the rustic for the civic, nature for buildings, his horse for … there was no equal to his friend.
He tried not to regret.
After an armada of aeroplanes and a boatload of buses, there was the city in all its glory. Reflective glass surfaces, harsh steel lines, and the cold glares of so many beings, thrown together yet so far apart, able to betray and lie without a second thought. So different from the simple nature of a boy and his pony.
He adjusted as best he could.
There was something depressing in the way a car could move so fast, yet be cursed to crawl like a scuttling insect. Controlled by traffic lights, hemmed in by blocks of concrete, fixed on set roads and told to go one way, one path only. Lost in the urban jungle, the freedom of the moors were a long way away.