The Green Horse

A horse stood rigidly on its four hinds in the middle of the meadow whilst its green,
viridescent mane flows accordingly to the rhythm of the wind. If you have not taken a
step closer, you might not be able to see it standing right there in the centre of this
picturesque view. A weird sight indeed, it was to the beholder.

        The green horse integrated seamlessly with the greenish hues of the
background in the meadow. As my eyes scan slowly about this majestic view, I
somehow realized that the grass where it stood was all yellowish and wilting. It was
as if a draught has absorbed all the water and life that they had. The lifelessness of
that once profusely alive creation has now attracted Hades and slowly you see them
being sucked into the darkness where I assume are the dark pits of Tartarus. I see
the horse struggling to stand firmly into the solid ground that I am slowly
approaching. I froze in my steps, seeing how the creature shriek and neigh whiningly
into the wind. But no one was around in the vicinity, except for me. Questions start to
appear in my brain, one of them being if I should go even closer to the now suffering
creature? But what if it is a beast, instead of a tame creature that my lifelong
education has taught me?
The next few gaps in Time were the most crucial time for me to save it. But it
might be a BEAST! And if it is so, I SHALL be the next victim and I WILL NOT have a
chance to cry for help whilst it stomps on me with its merciless hoofs where even the
overgrown horseshoes are trying to unhinge themselves from it. The horse breathed
a little and tried to steady itself. It was at this moment; I caught its gaze, and
evidently, it caught mine too. I might have been unstable emotionally and I tried to
walk away from the spot where I stopped. I tried to turn my head and I realized the
lurid grass below the horse has now elongated and stretched itself to where I stood.
It wrapped its brownish-yellow tentacles around my head where I had no choice but
to focus on it. Alas! I was illustrated slowly, yet surely by the painter in the same
picture.

... but in a split second, the personality in my head was screaming at me to snap out
of it.

Bright colours started splashing across the small borders of this framed
image. From blue streaks of sorrow and sympathy to red drops of fiery passion and
love for this wonderful creation in front of me. Yellow stop signs that the humans
have erected start flashing in the same frame that the onyx pupils of mine caught
sight of It. Ignorance is bliss, they said. But how blissful was I, I wonder, when I
started ignoring the tokens that the foolish children of the stableman threw at me? I
must have been at my highest point of felicity when I mistake all the palettes of
colours and instead mixed all of them. The children screamed, "Blue and yellow
makes green!", and wasn't that sufficient to scare me away? For this dignified life
form was indeed that neutral colour where I felt safe and protected. I knew. I ignored.
I justified. And I enjoyed it.

Red, was then emphasized even more. Call it scarlet, ruby, or cherry but that
was indeed the colour of the liquid that seeped from the wound that I earned from
the grass's tightened grasp. I was pulled even closer to It and my sight became
clearer with Time. I could see why the verdant vegetation of grass around It has
turned yellow. I saw why they slowly died, instead of staying as a single unit or patch
– however, It thought they would be. However, they did not just wilt; they wilt with
their disappointment and helplessness. Some of them had completely evaded from
the patch, yet I was too blind to realize that flowers were sprouting from their spot. I
too was the same patch of grass in another meadow, and I swore to never be in the
same position again. Therefore, I died and was reborn again, and this time, I was a
horse. The master of all meadows, the owner of my destiny. I forbid myself to be
trampled again but when I came across It, I realized I was not THE horse; and thus, I
succumbed. The long, wilted grass still would not stop its pulling and I allowed it to
continue. I brayed in pain; and to my dismay, thorns started to appear on its
lengthened limbs, and it was pricking me everywhere. But my pride and fear stopped
me from making any noise, so I looked at it with the same adoration when I stood
miles away admiring it. Denial escaped my mouth, and I brayed even louder at the
children that were standing around us. To my surprise, they were silenced as they saw how the tentacle is now stained with the vermilion fluid that dripped from a
lesion that I could not find.

The children were no longer concerned. Instead, fear struck their eyes. Fear
forced their eyes to tear up and they wept continuously for me. They started begging
me to stop advancing and I silently hoped that it would stop too, but reality hit
differently. The grasp was too tight, I was suffocating from my muted pain, and it just
kept going. Occasionally, the clutched loosened and I could breathe until I saw Its
eyes. There were emotions seamed in between Its two eyes but I have now lost my
ability to read anything. Those emotions were complicated and complication
confuses me, so I tried looking at the remaining reflection from my shadow.
Unfortunately, I realized I could not make out anything from my side either. The fear
that afflicted the children has now propelled me completely. I started to fear that It
will detach Its grip and this time the illustrator would not be kind enough to paint me
another destiny. I started to fear that It will not need me anymore when other people
came into the picture. So, I agreed to be entwined with It.

The terror did not stop.

Trepidation delineated when another horse started approaching from the
corner of my eyes. I was confident when I saw its shadow but when it was running at
a slower pace, I saw its appearance. Remember the flowers that sprouted beneath
its hoofs? This new horse that was coming towards It looked exactly like that flower.
Everything that it was, was everything the flower was. And everything that I am, is
everything the flower was not. Comparison, blame doubts, and whatever negative
emanations all settled in my head. What was I? What AM I?

Anger and annoyance struck It, whilst my own set of traumas struck me. I was
the same patch of grass in that different meadow again. All of these did not help how
I was feeling towards the stableman's children and myself. When I blinked my eyes, I
started to get a little bit dizzy, and suddenly, all I could see was the ground. The
ground was so alluring, it was hard to desalinate my thoughts of hurting myself. With
Its' grasp loosening day by day, it was easier for me to harm myself. As horses
gallop, we self-mutilate too. I banged my head into the ground till scars form and I can no longer feel the pain mentally as the physical pain has overthrown the
excessive suffocation that I was in. Whenever I felt hurt, I gave in to my darkest
desires of injuring myself, it brought me a weird form of satisfaction. Thus, explaining
how I could always forgive the creature in front of me. But days and weeks passed, I
was attacked with different scenarios that were portrayed right in front of my eyes.
Tell me, how could I oversee all these when It is so happy with that new horse that
galloped into the picture, and all I was doing on the other end was self-mutilating? As
a result, I gave up.

I gave up on being smothered in the bonds of the grass. I forced the artiste to
paint me out of the picture. I begged for me to be taken out and I was shown a way.
With the same means, I muted the children; I subdued the developments that were
exhibited. A sense of exhilaration entered my nostrils, and suddenly I could breathe.
The artiste was – and still is, merciless as the binds of the grass still adhere me to Its
gaze. Nonetheless, I could breathe now. I continued breathing for a few more days
until I could not take it. The ambiguity and uncertainty from the fixes were killing me.
I gave in to my impulsiveness and I expressed myself. In that short period, the artiste
took me in as an apprentice; and to my surprise, I temporarily became human and
was even given a brush. A brush to paint my fate, a new path to a meadow where I
could be grazing alone, and also a distance far enough to appreciate It and on top of
that, myself. It then turned into a beast. I was denunciated for the whole journey of
going closer to such a rare creature, and the blameworthiness that I received turned
into a dagger that pierced the already present lesions even more. I held onto the
brush even tighter.

With every second of me learning to live up to the artiste, I appreciated my
time being human. I suddenly had the courage I never had before, and my past does
not scare me as much. The beast turned into another shade of green, so dark and
even more tempting, a shade of a stone where humans would kill each other to get
their hands on it – emerald. I was enthralled with the same greed as these humans. I
tried to walk closer to the beast again, and I was gouged with the equivalent wound
when I was an animal. Sure enough, the painter changed my appearance again.
Because what was I indeed when I can barely learn anything from my lesson?
Disappointment filled me again, for I did the exact thing I forbid myself. Night falls, stars glistening in the dark sky, whilst the crescent-shaped moon provided me with
enough light to reflect on my thoughts. I looked down at the ground and I saw my
reflection, and slowly I dozed off into a series of dreams.

"Mother?" A woman in her fifties stood in front of me. Our appearances differ,
but it did not sway me for a moment that this was a figure of maternal instincts. I
have been human enough to learn that this individual was of Asian descent and
learning from the children of the stableman, I had known better than to not go
against her. She patted my head, and spoke softly in the pin-drop silence barn, "hao
ma bu chi hui tou cao." A Chinese proverb when translated directly means 'Good
horses do not eat the grass behind them'. This proverb proclaims for people (or
animals, in my case) to not go back to things that hurt them in the past. At that
instant, I could understand it perfectly, and the same proverb replayed in my head till
dawn came. The sun shone brightly, the appendages were still in the same state, but
now its bronze streak on the once green organism has been more prominent than I
first saw it. Birds started chirping, and everything was alive in the snap of the
painter's fingers.

The grasp of the grass is still there, do not get me wrong, but this time, I could
turn my back and walk towards a new path that I painted for myself when I was in
charge of the brush. The beast neighed loudly to affirm its presence, and I was
shocked. It retreated the grass's clench on me, as ironic as it seems, I bit some part
of it and brought it with me along that new path. I turned back for a while, and this
time, I saw even more flowers blooming below its hoofs. I brayed a little different this
time, it was of the same pain; but this time, with new companions and the children
that taught me to see the truth that I was blinded before.

I am still in love...

...but with myself, a new sense of contentment, alongside the persistent part
that I left and grew with It.