Lean On Me

A private breeding I've requested for myself between SPaVES Miral and my awesome Cleo pony. It feels kinda special breeding her to one of Oren's beautiful boys as she is Oren's design to begin with. ^.^ AND THIS BOY IS PRETTEH.

So this was an exciting day for IEC.

The black and white stallion was loosed into the sandy paddock on his own in the cool dip of the early afternoon sun, and while most horses that got to roam the sands of the egyptian fields for the first time would paw and mouth at it, this horse did not seem particularly interested. He walked, or rather seemed to jerkily hobble a few metres in and then stood, staring off in a direction, seemingly middle distancing. His eyes and ears swivelled in all directions, not normal horse like behavior patterns at all.

Linus gave a sigh at the arena gate as he and Vicky watched on, both on edge and overly fidgety. This was one of Miral's frist breedings since being released from lockdown, a place where he had spent most of his youth due to his skewed perception of reality. Vicky had been warned that his moods were intergangable at the drop of a hat and that he had in fact gotten several foals killed when he was younger due to his hallucinations and odd views on the real world.

She had been confident though that if any mare could take him, and give as good as she got, or at least enough for them to seperate the horses, it would be Cleo. Jemma brought the mare down to the paddock and loosed her into it as well. She immediately broke away with a squeal and made for the stallion, who slowly turned his head toward her, eyes and ears still swirling in all directions.

Vicky and Linus inhaled sharply as they watched. Cleo stopped dead and pawed at the sand. She knew something about this stallion was not normal. Miral slowly turned his head back to the direction he was facing before and then started doing something very peculiar.

He looked like he was trying to hold up his head but an immense force kept pushing it down towards the ground. Over and over again he seemed to pull his head up with immense difficulty, the rest of his body not moving, and then it would slump back down again.

This went on for no less than an hour. Cleo stood watching the entire time. Quiet and dumbfounded. Vicky then saw something in the mare that she had never displayed before.

As she watched, the mare's expression changed. First confusion and bewilderment, then the usual anger and resentment at being ignored, but then...suddenly her eyes changed into something soft and mournful. It looked like, pity? No. Surely not, surely Vicky was being stupid. She looked over at Linus who seemed to have noticed the same phenomenon and looked at her with a brow raised. Just as they both looked back, Cleo began to move towards the gleaming stallion, one foot at a time, very slowly and carefully. When she got close to him, he didn't move, just kept on with his seeming struggle against gravity, she, after a few minutes of watching him carefully, waited for his head to inevitably come up again, and slipped her withers beneath it. As his head came down instead of plummeting it came to rest on her and his right eye swiveled round to look at her. Seemingly recognising she was a fellow equine for the first time. He seemed...almost releived. And after a while she was even so brave as to attempt to groom him.

Miral, Linus and Cleo's Design (c)
Jemma, Vicky and Cleo (c)
Pose Reference: [link]