First Impression

    I first met Twilight on a warm evening. The sun was slowly falling behind the mountain casting orange rays of light that stirred up particles of dust in the air. It was the hour of contrast, the blue and grey pallet of night had already drained any color from the barn and surrounding landscape of sage brush and cheat grass, yet the shards of orange light made it beautiful.
    The sight I saw in the first paddock, was not a sight of beauty. Hunkered against the far rail, heads bent against a non existent wind were a pair of horses. A mare and her foal. The foal was filthy, heavy patches of caked mud covered his body. His legs were long and spindly, like most foals but the body it supported was thin, his petite neck did not look like it had the capacity to hold his square head.
   The mare was not even a horse anymore she was a shadow of a horse. A husk, just a body with no soul. Her coat was filled with dust covering her with a grey tinge. The balding mane strewn along her neck was composed of brittle dread locks that could snap at the lightest touch. Her tail was a rats nest hunched in upon itself in a massive snarl. She was a ghost, even her brown eyes were dull, I had been hoping to have a movie moment. A instant of moving a side the curtain of mane and seeing an eye of fire burning bright, defiant, even with hate but, there was nothing not a single shred of personality.
   This was the first horse I had ever meet that I could not envision myself owning, and that should have set the warning alarms howling  at once.This one was different.