From The Horse's Mouth

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I love horses. I have been obsessed ever since my first Shetland pony ride at age 4. However, I am no horse rider. I have taken riding lessons on and off over the years, only to discover that I really don't enjoy riding. I just like being around these wonderful animals.

Whenever I think of horses, certain words always spring to mind. Beauty. Strength. Nobility. Graciousness. Especially graciousness. There is no need for such a powerful creature to tolerate a human on its back, yet it does. Beyond Natural Horsemanship's Franklin Levinson reckons that horses love to play and dance with humans when the human understands the horse. I don't know for certain. He may be correct, but I think that the reasons why horses allow themselves to be ridden are truly known only to horses.

Last Sunday's piece was inspired by a prompt itself inspired by 100 Roleplay Scenarios! (Source: tmnt2k12.tumblr.com) The challenge was to pick one scenario from each of the four scenario lists and fashion these into a piece of writing. The four I chose (A Walk On The Wild Side, Mind controlled, City of Mindless Zombies, Must tell the truth) seemed rather surreal together, so I thought I either could go with a standard zombie story, or try my hand at writing something a little more twisted.

I didn't intend for horses to appear at all. I was trying to work in 'A Walk On The Wild Side' but the phrase, as common as it is, would not stick. I kept on thinking of A Horse On The Wild Side. Once I gave over to that idea, one horse became six (although only one of these winked), and ran rampant through my mind.

The man in the story smelled of plasticine simply because earlier that week I sat next to a man on the train who smelled that way. That man wasn't grey or evil however - at least, I don't think he was evil. The airport was a substitute for a train as I do write while travelling by train. I travel by air so infrequently that writing at airports has not yet happened (you never know though). All the rest was inspired by the three other scenarios - Mind controlled, City of Mindless Zombies, Must tell the truth.

And that is all there is to say.