Momentum and the Dream Horse

The Dream Horse had nowhere to be, for it was seldom called on as of late. Momentum and the Griptight played horseshoes long into the morning.

History woke to the sound of the clanking irons. “I see you’re still playing with the Omega shoes,” he observed.

“Is there another kind with which to play?” Momentum asked without interest. He had to ring this next throw to win the match.

“Well, there’re the Alpha shoes, although I don’t suppose many folks use those nowadays. The first horses had triangular hooves, and so they wore Alpha shoes, shaped very much like a capital A, with the bar across the middle serving the horse much as the elevated heel of your shoe serves you. Then, when the snow fell in the wintertime, these first horses wore shoes shaped like lowercase Alphas, with a wide round front and two curls in the back, like a fish’s tail fin. The horses walked more awkwardly in these broader shoes, but in them they were able to walk on the snow instead of sinking into it.”

Momentum had thrown and missed the pit entirely. He glared at History, “Is that all?”

History continued, unperturbed, “Over time, horses’ hooves lost their triangle shape, worn down by the rocks and washed smooth by the sea, and the horses liked these new hooves so much that they began giving the same kind of hooves to their children. Meanwhile, one horse after another realized that triangular shoes couldn’t possibly be the best fit for their newly rounded hooves, and so they made pairs of Omega shoes for their foals. In no time at all, the Omega shoes had completely overtaken their predecessors in popularity, and today horses only wear the Alpha shoes on extremely formal occasions. Omega shoes eventually became the new standard for horseshoes players as well, after an widely publicized incident in which an inattentive player on the receiving end of the pit had his head split wide open by the sharp point of an Alpha shoe.”

Momentum glared, as though he might be willing to attempt a similar, but intentional, act, even with his modern rounded shoe. Oblivious, History finished his story, “For a while, people used the winter Alpha shoes, but they abandoned these after the horses started wearing Omega shoes, whose open ends allowed players to slide the shoe around the stake. Until then, the only way to score a ringer was to drop the closed loop of an Alpha shoe around the stake, which only a very few players could do with any consistency. The introduction of the Omega shoe opened the game up to a much wider audience, as now even a novice could expect to throw a few ringers each game.

“And you say the Dream Horse is not real,” Momentum said disgustedly to History. “That little story of yours, aside from breaking my concentration all to pieces and costing me this horseshoe match, does not contain even a bit of truth. Alpha shoes! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

The Dream Horse began to glow, and Momentum and History each felt the following story.

“When I was a wee foal, people respected their horses,” the Dream Horse began. “They did not even think of us as their horses in a possessive sense. We had a relationship. Indeed, we worked for people, carrying them and their belongings, but in return we received plenty of food and soft places to rest, along with green fields to roam in.

“Yes, there were fences around our fields; there had to be, to keep out the coyotes and other predators, and to keep us from breaking our fragile legs by stumbling on the rocks outside after we had had too much to drink or when we were walking in our sleep. The fences were there, but they were low enough to be jumped by a fit and level-headed horse. Indeed, if at some point in a horse’s life it decided that carrying people and their baggage was not the life for him, it had the right to jump over the fence and head out to the wild.”

A tear of memory welled up in the Dream Horse’s eye and subsided as it blinked it away.

“But time passed and people decided that the coyotes had grown taller and the wild more treacherous, so they raised the fences that we could not jump them. We knew that the coyotes were no taller and the wild no more treacherous, but we went along with the story. After all, if we ever needed to escape from the fenced fields, we only had to channel our restlessness into sallowness and recalcitrance in our work. The people, finding no use for us in this uncooperative state, would usually just send us away. Occasionally they would threaten to turn us into glue, but in this case we would wait until a time when we were carrying them down the road, then throw them off and break for the wild.

“We would have accepted that arrangement,” the Dream Horse reflected. “We knew the people were lying to us, but the ability to escape was still there. Then, they changed our diet, feeding us delicious foods that weakened our legs and nourished in us a lethargy and apathy that sapped us of our desire to run free in the wild. By the time the foods had run their course, most of us were so weak that we believed we could not even survive in the wild. Many of us enjoyed the taste of the foods so much that we offered no complaint. Those of us who did complain were set free to go to the wild, and those who went died.

“And then,” the Dream Horse closed his eyes. “They took away the wild.”

“What do you mean?” asked Momentum.

The Dream Horse opened his eyes and stared into the distance. “I realized one day that their foods were only addling my mind and weakening my body. I saw that what had once been a relationship of mutual respect was now characterized by deception and domination. So for many days I ate only grass, until my legs regained their strength and my head cleared, and then in the dark of night I leaped over the fence. And I found myself inside another fence. I galloped to that fence, jumped it, and found myself inside still another fence. Eventually, I gave up and settled in working for a new man, and eating in his fields.

“And now, whenever we complain that some of us are not born to carry people, that we want to pursue some other dream for ourselves, the people tell us, Go to the wild! But there is no wild to go to anymore.”

“Where did you go to become the Dream Horse?” Momentum asked.

“I did not go anywhere,” the Dream Horse answered. “Days, I still live in those fields, carrying people and their things. Nights, I also serve people, but on my own terms. I believe that in some way horses were meant to serve people, and in the evenings I enter people’s dreams and protect those who request my protection. In this way, I can serve people the way I was meant to serve them, as an equal.”

The Dream Horse let his head fall and shook it softly from side to side, then let it come to rest as he studied the ground. Momentum asked, “Is there more to the story?”

“Oh, yes,” the Dream Horse replied. “But the sun is rising, and I must return to work.”

“Good luck,” History grumbled.

“Good luck,” echoed Momentum.

“I love you,” the Dream Horse told them, and he lifted his head. “As long as people like you believe in me, I can withstand whatever the world brings me.”

And he disappeared in a glow and a flash.