A Ghost and A Horse
Yaprak Unver
A long long time ago, a tiny ghost plagued the women of earth. Three or four inches in height, it was the color of charcoal gray, the shape of a flickering flame, and with two amber eyes. This ghost would travel from woman to woman, crawling inside their torso through the middle of their upper backs, going deep within to find their Well of Nourishing Joy and eat it all up till there was nothing left. Women wouldn’t die right away although the light of their eyes would. Their laughter would no longer burst out like a waterfall but cackle like a truck full of aluminum police barriers banging into each other. And although the women could and would still have children, they would grow extensively protective over their kids. This protectiveness, however understandable it may have seemed, was to their children’s detriment.
The world was quite like ours, with a bellybutton and an opinion unique to every person who there roamed. People would offer their opinions to women with largely good intentions. They would say this or that, give ideas on how to protect your back, whom to blame when the ghost came to you, how to better protect your daughters from the ghost, how to make sure you didn’t over-protect them… Just a bunch of horse shit, available for free to anyone willing to listen, or for a fee, for those whose desperation made them more willing to pay.
In this world there was also a young woman who kept horses. As part of her horse care work, it was this young woman’s job to deal with horse shit day in and day out. Her work taught her what horse shit looked like and what it was meant for; she knew you could dry horse shit up and use it as fuel, or sprinkle it over your soil, but it was never a good idea make your life's decisions by it. So when her own mother got struck by the ghost, the young woman gave no heed to the endless opinions and emotionally manipulative claims of the people around her. No-- her mother was not to blame for the ghost attack, it had just happened. No-- she had not neglected her well being by not wearing a cardigan (therefore exposing her back) in June, she was being reasonable. And no-- she herself did not need to change her ways in fear of the ghost hitting her next. She just had to go on a ride on her favorite horse Faith to clear her head.
The young woman got on her horse and rode around for hours, or maybe days, or weeks; magic story durations are not measurable by our ordinary units of time. On her ride she ran into the sadness she felt for her mother, in the form of a frozen lake, with a weeping willow stretching its naked branches over it. She took a mental picture of the lake and kept riding. Then she met her anger at the thick headed people, in the form of an unpredictable volcano, erupting lava. She rode her fearless horse around this volcano, skipping over puddles of lava which turned into igneous rock as soon as it cooled. After a while until they both got too warm and thirsty. She then rode to a little creek to drink from and the moment she knelt by the creek, she found her own compassion in it. When both the young woman and her horse Faith had cooled down by the creek, she rode back home.
It was dusk when the young woman returned. Right before she got off her horse Faith to open the stable door, she noticed two little blinking lights on the ground. it was a pair of amber lights, going in and out of a pile of hay, waiting for her arrival. The young woman knew what these amber lights were, as do you, and she also knew what to do.
The young woman slowly rode her horse back into a clearing. The amber eyes were following her. She then bent over and whispered to Faith’s ear; get’em girl!
Faith was fearless. She made a game of ghost trampling in a dance that looked quite like whack-a-mol. Fatih stomped on the ghost that ate up women’s Well Of Nourishing Joy. She put the ghost out like a cigarette butt someone with a lot of frustrations was smoking outside a bar where all of their friends were hanging out inside. The young woman got off her happily excited horse and fed her carrots. A passer by saw his own longing for companionship in this image; a young woman gratefully feeding carrots to her trusted horse.
Weeks later the young woman got word that the ghost had struck again in a neighboring town. She got on her horse and rode there to trample the little devil. Later she discovered that all horses were capable of such fortunate play, and taught a few other woman riders how. Not long after that, the ghost trampling game took on a life of its own until the women of the earth were safe from murderous ghosts and the loudmouths who knew nothing were hushed once and for all.
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Inspired by the valuable work of the good folks at CAE.