Phase 3 - Dusk Dancing

Their time had begun again.

Purple, pink, and blue danced together in swirls of fading light, nature joining the deeply shadowed horse whose swirling steps kissed the white sand beneath his hooves. It swirled across his back, darted between the arching muscles in his neck, before finally igniting in a brillant spark in his eyes. The light had returned to this stallion’s eyes, and what a moving poetry it created; the opulent balls of old Versailles seemed to come to life again with every sounding hoofbeat that struck the sand.

Tanwen stood, the lunge whip hanging loosely between her lax fingers, that same luminosity lighting her eyes and pulling her lips into a smile that split around her gently spoken commands. Long gone were the days when she had struggled even to create a whisper of delight in Ascot; now they were replaced with joyful nickers and sassy nudges when Ascot deemed her too slow with her commands. He leaped into work with a sass that Tanwen hadn’t expected, but now was as essential to her working with him as Tsaicovsky’s cannons were to his music.

Tonight, the pair had graduated to a real competition arena. Tanwen still didn’t dare to ride him - she wanted to ensure that there wasn’t even a thought of hesitation on the ground before she moved to his back - but that fact cast no shadow on the two of them. There, standing in that arena, Ascot cantering in a whirl around her, Tanwen’s now healed and scarred heart started beating again, in time with her savior's hoofbeats.

A tear slipped down her face as she let the whip fall completely from her hands, and she started to run in time with Ascot, a high, ecstatic, slightly manic laugh erupting from her chest. Ascot started, pace slowing to a collected trot before bounding back into a working canter. The pair were not yet connected enough to sense each other's moods immediately, but they were close enough. The whip now gone, he freely cantered to her side, making sure to keep it working. Ascot’s greatest joy now came not from the work itself, but pleasing Tanwen - and deep plum eyes met blue and brown. If the world were a more magical place, then the souls of these two healed creatures bonding together would have been visible in a display so grand that it would have rivaled the sunset behind them. Still, it is not, and so the only indication was a click felt in both their chests and a warm sigh of wind, swirling around them like an awaited dance partner. A smile so warm and wide spread across Tanwen’s face that, if she had stopped for a moment to think, she would have realized it was the first time since her old partner's death that a smile like that had even thought to tug at her lips. But the joy of the moment kept pushing her mind forward, leaving thoughts of the past far behind.

Together, the pair swept across the arena, Tanwen dancing long-remembered dressage patterns with Ascot by her side, doing his best to dance to Tanwen’s whisping waltz. A new world of possibilities had been born to the tune of two hearts made whole, and if one listened closely, the faint, barely there hoofbeats of a dancing ghost who had started the tune in the first place.