Larue...

I am not yet even born, and I am bored. I move, I fidget, I push against the boundaries of my mother’s womb because there is naught to do but exist in here. Though I am not yet conscience or sentient, even the subdued firing my synapses in my brain know how boring this is.

I want out. 

And, after more time than I can afford— my time has not begun and, still, I am counting the moments I have not filled with thoughts and activity — the womb around me, this temporary home of warmth and safety, tightens, pushes, contracts. Some foals might find birth uncomfortable, unwilling to shed their protected cocoon; but I find it exhilarating. It’s exciting, thrilling, it’s dynamic and squeezing, and a little distressing— but in the end it brings light and change.

I am pure movement when cold air replaces liquid warmth. Long, slick legs of hoary pink kicking and flailing. I do not even know what the ground is, and yet my rose thorn hooves are thrashing for purchase. The coldness is invigorating as much as it is shocking, and I like it. It makes me feel alive— not that my active little body needs any more life at the moment. 

The only thing in my small universe that could have calmed my legs in that moment licks me— mother. My dam— bright turquoise eyes try to focus on the pale, warm, homey body that surrounds me, nuzzles me, talks to me. Speech! I have, in my gestation, heard rumbles— many of them sweet and lilting— coming from my mother. But to hear my mother’s words right from her mouth; the sound is sweet and my own tart muzzle reaches out to her licking one.

A strange vibration happens in my throat— the beginning of a nicker. But I am too young, my lungs too sticky from birth, to truly be able to make a noise, just yet. so, instead, my slick head wobbles and my legs being to flail once again: attempting to stand is my reply to my mother’s sweet words. 

Standing is the hardest thing I have ever done. It is the only thing I have ever done. But it is still the hardest. My long legs have been folded around me for as long as I have known— they have too many angles! Too much length! My hooves don’t stay where I put them and my body wavers and falls in directions I do not tell it to! 

My frustration is obvious, in small squeaks and snorts, as I fumble against gravity for a long while— the longest while I have known! But, eventually, I am standing. Awkwardly, legs splayed and knobby, pink knees wobbling. But I am up, and I am hungry. I don’t know what hunger actually is, I just know that my pale yellow sides are pained, and so my quickly clearing eyes sharpen on my mother. 

I have just managed to stand. Walking seems impossible to my neonatal brain.

...pucker up