At the sudden appearance of the groundhog, Dexter spooked. Fortunately, he did not bolt. He merely crow-hopped. Only, it happened so quickly that it felt as though he literally jumped out from underneath me. It had been several years since I’d ridden, so my body was not prepared to react in time to stay aboard. Before I knew it, I had landed squarely on my back on the soft ground near a huge maple tree. The wind was knocked out of me and for a few panicked seconds, I was unable to inhale or exhale. Finally, my diaphragm relaxed and I gulped in huge breaths of precious air. I lay there a few moments looking up through the branches of the tree and making sure I could still feel my fingers and toes. They were all in good working order. My vision was a little problematic, though, and it occurred to me that my head must have hit one of the tree roots protruding from the pasture floor. Things at the corners of my eyes were still a little blurry, but gradually clearing. I could hear Dexter tearing hungrily at the grass a few paces away. I sat up … and had a terrible shock. It seemed I was staring into the eye of some freakish, appalling character from a horror movie. I scrambled backwards on my bottom a few feet, surprised that the knock to my head had produced such a vision. It only took me a split second to realize that the vision in front of me was real and that it was the face of a horse. He was standing over me, head lowered nearly to the ground, large, soft nostrils quivering with interest as he took me in. My attention turned back to his eyes. The one on his left was a muddy brown, perfectly normal. However, the one on his right – the one that had first entered my vision, was far from normal. It was a very pale, almost reflective blue filled with flecks of light not unlike what you’d see in cracked glass. It reminded me of a headlight. It was so perfectly blue that it did not look real. I wondered whether the animal was even able to see out of it. I had grown up around thoroughbreds, and in all my life had never been wholly familiar with painted breeds. I did not realize at the time that what I was seeing was actually quite common among pintos. The horse in front of me had a face that was mostly black with some white on the right side. The genetics that caused this kind of coloring caused blue eyes in painted horses. “So you’re the …” I began out loud, realization sinking in. “You’re the one who was supposed to be Last Caveat!” I sat there for a few moments, just looking at him. From my position on the ground, he loomed above me. He was about two-thirds black. The other one-third consisted of splashes of white on his flanks, shoulders and neck. His mane and tail were completely black. Someone had been taking care of him. I observed short, well-kept hooves and a sleek, pulled mane. A halter path was cut between his ears, and from what I could tell, it had been done with a scissors, not a clippers. He obviously had to have been approached by a human being regularly because he did not appear to be scared of me. He watched me calmly for a few minutes, chewing methodically on a mouthful of grass, then moved away slowly in search of more. I was roused by the sight of Dexter grazing serenely a few yards away in a patch of sunlight. Rising slowly to my feet, I approached him and took hold of the reins, pulling his head away from the ground. I checked to make sure all of his tack was still in order, mounted and, feeling the slight spin in my head, decided to abandon the rest of my ride and head for home. That night, for the first time since I arrived at my parents, I slept restlessly. Something was bothering me. Something aside from the obvious tension I had weathered that evening. Something about the preceding day. There was an inconsistency in it somewhere that my subconscious had spent the whole night trying to sort through. Of all the things I had seen, heard or said that day, one thing had not fit. What was it?
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