Horse Whispering

Keyah gripped the wooden fence as she worked her way along it, wincing as she felt the splinters and paint chips go by under her palms. Through practice, she forced herself to seem unsteady, as if she did not know where she was going, pushing her sunglasses up her nose. She waved away one of the stable-hands when they rushed over to help, smiling to him. "I'm fine, thank you, just give me a moment. I want to listen." Inwardly, she kicked herself for nearly giving herself away. Wait until you're sure you can hear their footsteps.

Pretending to be blind was not easy, though it was not a lie. Legally, she was; glaucoma had stolen her sight at an early age, leaving her eyes able to only see the tiniest blur of color at their center. In its place, though, had grown another set of senses. She perceived the world through her own mind, without color or light, but through some strange extra-sensory phenomenon even she did not understand. It was as though you walked into a room, she had once explained to her father, and instinctively had a picture in your brain of where everything is and how far away it is from you. It had been weak when she was young, but with time and the careful help of her father, astounded though he was at his daughter's capabilities, she had grown to control it. That and her other gifts, of course.

She sighed as she came to rest, gripping the fence and leaning on it, extending her senses to look beyond it to the pasture. Her mind perceived the horses and the people clumsily trying to mount them, even as she cocked her head to pretend to listen. To tell the truth, she was perhaps overplaying it. Normally, she would simply act as anyone else would, and nobody would notice the fact that her eyes did not focus or react to the light. Here, though, people would be in close contact with her. She felt nervous, as she always did when in public like this. What had possessed her to try to ride a horse? An hour ago, she'd been so certain that she needed to do this to prove She Was Just Like Any Other Girl and She Could Do Anything and that she wasn't a freak, even though her father was dead and she lived alone and had nothing to prove to anybody...

Her reverie was broken when she heard thumping and whinnying. One of the horses reared slightly and stamped, snorting, shaking off its rider from its saddle's stirrup. The man went staggering backwards, caught by a ranch hand. "Ah, he gets spooked sometimes. Don't worry about it, sir, we'll find you another one." As the hand reassured the would-be rider, the horse snorted again and ambled off towards the corner of the pen, where it turned about and eyed the commotion as the next tour group clumsily mounted up.

Keyah leaned forward, curious now. She could not see the markings of its coat, but it seemed smaller than the other horses. It was no pony, yet it seemed timid. She closed her eyes, breathed deep, relaxed herself, and reached out. She had delved deeply into the mind of dogs, cats, even the occasional creature by the side of the road, but she had never read the mind of a horse. She felt its mind against hers, moving slowly so as not to give away her presence and startle it, concealing her own presence. It was curious. Like the other animals she had read, it felt no different from a human's, warm and alive and thinking, but its thoughts were so unlike a human's. Emotions, concepts, pictures, feelings. Not words.

It was afraid.

She tapped into its senses, peering through its eyes. At first, she was confused, because little was different from her own eyes. Blackness surrounding a central halo of blurry light and color, so similar to her own. The horse's sight was not as far gone as hers, but it was still poor, and she could barely recognize the shapes of the other humans and horses milling about. Keyah suddenly felt dizzy as she realized she was being fed the sight from two eyes facing opposite directions, only making the effect worse. Her viewpoint moved, and she felt a wave of nausea as the horse's eyes swirled independently from one blurred object to the next, unable to recognize anything, wary of everything. It was not up to her where the horse decided to look. They whirled from target to target, color to color, as the brightly dressed tourists milled around and it heard constant noise from things it could not see properly. The only reassurance was the comforting feel of the run-down wooden fence pressed up against its side, knowing that it was in a corner.

Keyah breathed out as she withdrew from its mind, not even having been aware that she was holding a breath in her lungs until it hurt, feeling the nausea subside. She let the tension go out of her body. The horse's own anxiety had bled through onto her. Perhaps it was that... or perhaps it was the kinship she felt. The only difference between the two was that she could see with her mind.

"Excuse me." She said, when she heard a stable hand pass close by. "When you have a moment, can you let me ride that one?" She pointed to the blind horse.
"Are you sure, ma'am? He's mean."
"He's not mean. He's scared." She shot back, kicking herself again immediately afterwards, willing herself not to look him in the eyes, to appear as if she couldn't see, but her eyes - useless though they were - were locked upon the horse behind her sunglasses.
"... Well, if you're sure, ma'am." The stablehand replied, hesitantly, and offered her his hand.
"I am." She took it.

By the time the tour group was ready to depart, Keyah was among them, astride her chosen mount, riding out the gate, her mind and the horse's intertwined. Though it was wary of the new senses it received from its rider, it seemed to accept them. With Keyah urging her shy mount onwards, they boldly strode forward, guided by a stablehand towards the mounted tour route. The horse was tense at first underneath her and swayed uncertainly with all the movement about it, but in time, it's movements grew more confident as it learned to trust the senses from Keyah's mind, letting it's rider see for it. Slowly, eventually, the horse began to relax and trot comfortably, no longer afraid of the world it could not perceive.

Keyah smiled. If neither of them could see, then she would find the way for both of them.