Stepping Stone

  Even though I hardly considered Tylo the ghost, a horse I still felt compassion for her and her son Ringo. I had just come back from UNI, I knew what it was like to be shattered into pieces and try to shuffle them back together into something that resembled the person I once was. I understood Tylo's appearance, the hair loss from lack of food, since I had gone through the same thing, only I had starved myself. Tylo distrusted new people, especially the people like me who liked to come into her personal space, touch her brush her, prod around to see what was wrong. She hated prodding people, and I despised psychiatrists we had common dislikes.
  Finally I managed to gain  shaky ground with her, Tylo knew I was not going to hurt her or her colt, but she did not like by cuddling and fawning.  Little flakes of her past  slowly began to dislodge and fall around me like snow.Tylo could not be tied securely to anything, she was claustrophobic in a way, she needed to be able to move without walls or fences moving with her. A few years before she came to Bishops she had been tied to a fence post for a long period of time, eventually something spooked her and she tried to run away, she pulled against her lead rope and the fenced came lose from the ground and slammed into her front. She took off running around with an iron fence tripping her legs and ramming against her body. Under Gretchen's wise instructions I tied Tylo to twine so if she spooked and pulled the twine would snap and she would be free.
  I brushed that horse again and again since we did not know if she would tolerate water and did not want to traumatize her. The gray shroud of dirt she had slowly brushed out into the dull coat of a black bay. With an iron curry I began to work the patches of long hair she had on her rump and along her back. It was the end of summer and she still had pieces of her winter coat clinging to her. It was an obvious sign of malnutrition, (as if her skeletal built was not enough) her body did not have the strength to shed. Her tail posed a problem, it I brushed it to hard all the hair would fall out, but she had a massive knot in her tail that needed to be removed. I worked carefully, like an archaeologist excavating a new site, I worked around the edges of the knot and then dove in deeper. Portions of the rat's nest were simply to tangled and I had to cut out chunks of tail. By the end about 1/3 of her tail still remained. Her mane was also tough to brush, the dreadlocks needed to go so Tylo lost about 1/4 of her meager mane. This brushing time with Tylo was not entirely unpleasant, I began to see pieces of her that were unique, she had small threads of white on her rump and on the outskirts of her pure black tail, and a few strands of white in her mane. Her eyes resembled the eyes of an ancient Egyptian with a streak of carmel eye liner under each eye. Her nose was no single color, she had splashes of pink mixed with pools of white and black. For some reason it reminded me of a rock cover in lichen. Unlike most horses Tylo didn't mind having her face brushed. However, she hated having her hooves picked, every time I clicked for and ran my hand down her leg to lift her hoof, she would lean onto that leg. We would argue for several minutes on each hoof debating the merit in her keeping all four hooves planted on stable ground or having a rock lodged in her hoof. Regardless we began to make our way along the stepping stones of returning to being human, and horse.
  During these brushing sessions I began to interact with Ringo. It did not take long to discover that Ringo was a little imp who had double intentions behind everything he did. When I first began working with Tylo he would butt in wedging himself between me and his mother. He did this partially because he wanted to protect his frail mother and be her shining knight, and he wanted to be brushed and investigate the bristly creatures running up and down  his body. He was arrogant like his father, and bold almost to the point of being pushy but I adored him.