Twilight and I braved the trail for the second time this summer, sort of. I walked her out (as in me walking on the dusty trail ahead of her as she kicks up dirt onto my back in the hundred some odd degree weather) while she grew used to being on the trail without another horse. Huffing and puffing, ears swiveling every which way.
Because of the sudden heat wave there is a layer of ash like dust on the trail, in some areas Twilight sank up to her knees in the dirt. It billowed around us, a pale wash. I almost felt like this is what it would be like after Armageddon, alone wandering in a desert of ash. Despite the dreary picture it was calming to be alone, to just walk along the trail, leading the way.
We made it out to the first gate, which lead to all the places Margrith and I had our most idiotic and delightful adventures. We went through the gate, and I rode Twilight up the trail aways, and saw a creature moving on the trail. The sun hit my eyes just right so I could not see what it was, just something shadowy and low to the ground. Twilight had yet to notice it. I kept my eyes on it pulling up short where the trail divulged into a boulevard of sunflowers. Twilight suddenly became ridged under me, shoulders tense her neck arch, ears pricked focused on the creature ahead.
"Just notice something there Sherlock?" I murmured.
It was almost comical to watch the way his face suddenly constricted into a frown, the way his lip twitched towards a snarl, he looked human. He crept off the trail and crouched in the dried moss, cheat grass, and sage becoming still. He was small for a badger, he had the characteristic bandit face with shadows around his eyes and snout, highlighted by brilliant streaks of white, his coat was unusual, a marble of dark carmel and black. I think he was rather young, because he didn't raise a hair as Twilight and I went by, just coward in the dirt. We only went a few feet past him before I decided I did not wish to continue alone, though I wasn't alone with Twilight.
But I looked at those hills, and the stretch of flat land still stretching ahead of us and I simply felt it did not belong to just Twilight and I, we were incomplete and not fit to tackle the heat, the thick chalky dust, the memories that awaited us.
Even though we turned around then, I didn't feel like we'd failed, or turned back to early, it felt right.
The badger was gone when we went back, but I noticed something else, among the sunflowers were small violet wild flowers on thin delicate stems, and some sort of brush with long thin branches and sage colored leaves. I stopped Twilight and picked a few of a three and carefully placed them in my saddle bag, I wanted a remnant of our trail riding days and these flowers reminded me of a time when our small pack of four, Margrith, Rosie, Twilight, and myself had ridden out on the trail when the grass was a emerald green and brimming with small groves of wild flowers. It was as close as we ever got to riding on the forbidden green hills we used to enviously gaze at. Despite the heat and blaring sun, as I rode Twilight back to the barn there were butterflies, small white cabbage moths, and one brilliant Monarch butterfly flying above the rest.
I rinsed the dust off Twilight and myself before I headed home, and stuck the flowers in a large hard back book. I don't want to say which book, I want to be surprised when sometime latter if life I open the pages and out will fall an entirely different story, neatly pressed, and colorful like a perfect summer.
