It was an early spring day when the Master walked across his fields, enjoying the first sights of flowers and verdure rather than inspecting the land for the annual crops. The air was flagrant, the trees filled with invisible voices and there was that magic of expectancy in the air, so cruel from futile beginnings.

Suddenly the Master heard a sound of rattling and human voices, low and loud, murmuring and shouting intermittently, coming from a lane still hidden from view with a line of dignified trees. He took a few steps toward the lane, taking precaution not to be seen. There was a group of people behind the trees, ragged figures in heavy winter clothes, not clean, to say the least, wrapped carelessly in their flapping wings that followed the heavy movements and continuous stooping. The men were concerned with something; it seemed that they were trying to hurry up the road but were prevented in doing so at a speed that would suffice them. Obviously they were not feeling at ease being on private property, and the Master would know why they would feel so. The reason for their determent apparently was a clumsy horse, which could not or would not obey their rushed commands. So, the men tried different means, namely kicks and stabs with their walking sticks, as well as useless vulgarities shouted loud at the horse's ears. All in all, a pitiful sight.

The horse was of an unrecognizable light color, being covered with different nuances of mud, obviously collected at various roads. There was reddish clay on its skin, a pale layer of mud, and trails of shoes and ashes. Its main was, it seemed, never combed and it was hanging over the stooped disobedient head in a rather resentful and bleak manner.

The Master, usually prone to pity but much less to action, stopped, taken by the wretchedness of the sight. And what was it that made him move, outside his established routines, and step in front of the men - was it the hopelessness of the actors' situation, a shift in the vivid air, the untamed influence of spring, but he did something he was not used to doing - he hailed them, and asked them in a grave voice what they were doing. The men shuffled uncomfortably looking at each other, their need for rush increased almost to panic, but then diminished in a self-effacing behavior, faced with their obvious lack of right to be where they were found, and caught.

Apparently the men were trespassing, out of need or of ill intentions, but this was not what the Master was interested in. He wanted to know what the horse was objecting to, and that turned out to be a suspicious load that had fallen from its back, while the men were trying to put it back on the horse-blanket; it did not have a saddle. Far from being interested in the contents of the load, the Master inquired on what they were doing with the horse. A row of foul-mouthed curses rushed from the men's mouths in unison. Still, the Master drew closer to the group, at its obvious unease, in order to take a better look of the hapless creature.

It was indeed a young animal. Not only young, but on second look, it was something of a beauty. Its elongated lines arched elegantly to shape its noble curves, the dirt did not destroy the finery of its nostrils or the expressiveness of its failing eyes, which seemed to be looking within, into a large flame whose burning gave and devoured life in the same time. It was a wild and bewildered creature, potentially dangerous; beaten but not broken, although about to break itself to spite its tormentors. There was no pride in the arch of its neck, but gloom and hatred. The horse gave the air of having lost something essential to its nature, and now it was destroying itself under the braces, the spurs and the stabs of its owners.

The Master did not wait long. Taking advantage of his superior position to the trespassers, he probed them with questions to show them he knew they were in his hands, to put them in jail or let them go. He let them first believe that he was determined to hand them to the law, and then he offered them to freely let them go if they sold him the horse. Surprised to be given a possibility to leave and to sell the horse instead of simply trading it in exchange for their freedom, they hastily offered the animal for a random price. It was not too much for the creature. The Master reckoned that he would be paying much less than what he would get, if he'd restore the beast to its beauty. In rush the money changed hands and in less than a blink the group was gone, with their load on their shoulders. No wonder, they never appeared on that property again.

The Master was left on the pathway standing with the end of the rope tied around the horses head. The creature was looking at him with the same despair and fiery disobedience with which it had been confronting its former owners. Its eyes were gleaming dully, with something inside them that looked almost wile, evil.

The Master returned the horse's gaze with a growing sense of sadness, then took a long worried look of its trembling knees and entangled main, and making up his mind, almost regretting his decision to take the animal, suddenly reached to remove the dirty blanket from its back. The horse reared with a piercing whine and swayed its hoofs toward the Master's head. Taken off guard, he managed to evade the hit but fell on the ground, still clinging to the end of the rope from which the horse tried to free itself. The beast threw itself in the opposite direction attempting to run, but it only managed to drag the man several feet through the mud, until he grabbed an old tree trunk with his legs and managed to make a ring around it with the rope. This, thankfully, stopped the horse. The Master started laughing. He looked at its muddy clothes, and looked again at the horse's body covered with mud. They were so similar now, kindred in a way. The horse stood still, trembling and in doubt whether to attack or flee, and locked its eyes into to laughing Master. It seemed almost taken aback by this strange reaction. Who knows what it was, but the laughter seemed to make the horse change its mind. Still with its eyes locked at the Master, it turned toward him, took slowly two steps toward the lying body, and with a reconciliatory but still grudging low whine pushed its head into the shoulder of the man and breathed loudly in his neck. They were both done. The horse with nowhere to go, with no desire to go, with no knowledge of anything but beating and despair, and the master, alone in the wood, muddy and left to the mercy of this large beast. Who befriended whom, who took pity on whom, it is hard to say. But they were both for a moment beaming with something that the forest would have greeted if it had known how.

It turned out to be some day, for both the horse and the master. He gently pulled the rope across the field, away from the path, in direction of his house, and waited patiently for the horse to make up its mind or to graze on the way. It was a long walk home.

It gave the Master long enough time to think, still beaming with the remains of the laughter that had overtaken him, having time to briefly let memories of failures and losses in his life touch him again. It was deep sadness bordered by reasonless merriment. It was some day, for both of them.

Once in the house, by this time the horse following more willingly the Master, he handed the rope to the groom and let him lead the horse to the stables. The stables were practically uninhabited, sheltering only one old black horse now, used to do the field chores around the property. The black horse greeted the newcomer with a funny sway of its head, as if it saying, 'I know what you think, it may all seem awkward to you, but take it as it is, and you'll see where it leads you - nobody knows that in advance.' So the young horse entered its new stables and still suspicious of every novelty around it, slowly calmed down.

Days passed in easy life of recovery, abundant food, regular brushing and combing, light promenades and free dallying in the coral. The Master was patient and yet rather touched by this new appearance. He would come to the coral, sometimes to spend a whole afternoon in close, and to throw a frequent look at the movements of the animal. Most of the time he gazed through the mild forms of the noble creature as if through it, with an almost apologizing look in his eyes. There was an expression of regret and dark will, deeply lost, in his eyes, as if something not present anymore was being lost over and over again. He was recounting all objects of beauty ever gained and lost in his life. And there were, obviously, more than one.

On the other hand, the horse seemed to be gaining something it had lost. It gained grace, and tranquility of movements; it started accepting appearances before reacting fearfully or aggressively toward them. Its neck would bend with enjoyment in the slow movement, as if growing aware that there was something more in itself, a beauty, a self-consciousness in a naiveté natural to beasts only, and not to men.

Still, the horse would not let itself be approached. It would whine in terror and fury and defend itself from any closeness with human body, even if it were the hand which were to trim him or feed him. There seemed to be an inexhaustive well of terror in it, and no patience, no mild voice would tame it.

One day, taken by that latent craziness lying in each human being, the Master took up a strange game: he started imitating the horse and do what the horse would do. When the horse would be still, he would be still, when the horse would move, the Master would move in a similar manner. He kept the distance, approaching the horse only if it approached him, distancing himself when the horse would move away, in this way hoping to show the horse that it can control and demand its own space. At least he was hoping, without conscious hope, that the horse would learn this.

And, miraculously enough, it started working. The horse got used to controlling its distances, and somehow it started controlling its closeness to human beings as well. And there came the day when the horse approached the Master on its own accord. It was a marvel: the muzzle touched the Master's raised palm. This, strangely, filled the Master with a sense of pleasure and accomplishment gentler than any other he had felt before.

So it was, they were building a manner of communication, of understanding each other in their own way. The animal seemed to be aware of the Master, differentiating him strongly from the other men around the house. It would pretend not to look at him when he would be around, but in the same time it would respond to each movement the Master would make. People thought that there was some kind of telepathy between them, but it was only the practice of synchronous movements, hidden signals, gestures and sounds they directed at each other that made their communication so accurate.

It was strange for the Master to observe himself too, as he discovered that he had acquired something from the horse's grace by following its movements; he had acquired something of the peacefulness of the animal, by resting in the same position for a long time; he also acquired the courage to move swiftly and unpredictably at the slightest signals of his inner or outer surrounding. He learnt to act without a motive. To move and to be, to be and to move - these the master was learning to his careful amazement.

And what was the horse learning? Evidently it was learning to trust, and to be touched. And to be free from unchosen presence and confinement, not to be punished for its freedom of whims and changes. This habit of freedom gave a certain dignity to the horse's bearing.

The Master never though of attempting to ride the horse. He acquired some sort of respect for the beauty of the being, and it seemed to him that such a gesture, reins and saddle, would be somewhat of a sacrilege. Yet who knows how the horse felt about carrying the Master through its spaces of freedom. Perhaps it would have been a non-human gift of beauty to ir, but one cannot know, as the man never dared to ask the horse for it. No, the Master was content to adore and be adored by the horse, which he obviously was. The Horse had chosen him, and he had chosen the horse. It was a natural choice, or a determination of inner nature.

Yet, the summer passed, and the Master's holidays time was gone. There came the day he had to go back to the town where his duties and family and work lied. He simply had to go. In his mind he never thought of losing the horse, although it felt so at the moment of departure. The horse just stood there, with an almost visible tremor in its knees; it never whined. At the last moment it averted its eyes from the figure of the departing man, and it remained there, a frozen statue with a frozen gaze across the fields.

Which image might have been the last one in its mind when it died within a few months with a broken heart? The Master or the distances? Or they overlapped in such a way that love and freedom could have become one? And so it died

The Master lost the horse, and the beauty it borne with it went to accompany the other quiet losses in his life. The horse was not the first one he let slip away, and perhaps not the last one. Would he have acted differently if he knew that horses do die? One cannot tell.