Horse

Stand close to a horse and it is already reading you. It watches your face and your shoulders and the way you are holding yourself, and it knows whether you are calm or whether something is off before you have said a word. Feed it a few times and it remembers you for it. Horses know the people who are good to them, and they will know you long after you have been away.

The horse did not start out here. It came up from the south long ago, passed from hand to hand along the old trade routes until it reached this country and the people here took to it the way people everywhere have. Some animals you live alongside. The horse is one you come to lean on, and once it is in your life it tends to stay there.

It is a herd animal, built to pay close attention to whoever is around it. It bonds hard, it reads a mood from across a field, and it does not hand its trust to just anyone. A horse decides about you slowly, and once it has decided, it stays decided. You learn its moods and it learns yours, and somewhere in there the two of you start reading each other without trying.

That is the quiet thing people fall for. Spend the time, and the horse will carry it. It remembers the ones who were good to it, and it does not forget.