2/23/14 My Young Inspiration

In my very first blog post in November of last year, I wrote about my little grand daughter, who at eight years old wrote an eighteen-page story.  She was then an inspiration to me to start embarking on my writing with the hope of writing and finishing a novel one day.

My objective of writing is not only to use my right side of the brain and express my thoughts, emotion and feelings through writing, but I also want to tell the stories about some of my passions for the welfare of youth, children, women, arts and music.  There is a mission that I support, namely ZOE International, mission to fight against child trafficking.  I’m hopeful that whatever income I can raise from writing can be used to further the cause of this mission and my other passions.

Well it’s Emi’s 10^th birthday next week; I have wanted to post her story of “Midnight Forest” since last weekend, but got so busy I did not get a chance to do it.   Now it’s time, enjoy the read from the young author!

MIDNIGHT FOREST by Emi

                      Abstract Horse Painting By Kathy Loui Monsegue

Birth and Early Childhood

I was born in a warm stable; I was a Shetland filly.  The other animals in the barn were: a few cows, two roosters and two hens, the first hen with seven eggs and the other five.  There were two pigs that were going to have piglets, and there were also ten more horses in the barn besides my mother and I.  The cows were across from our stall.  In the corner, there were chickens, and to our left, there were the pigs.

The night I was born, except for a drink of water, my mother didn’t leave me at all.  The hay net was right next to us, so my mother did not have to leave me for that.

The next day, it was sunny.  All the doors and windows were opened, so we got fresh air.  It was then that my owner noticed me when he came in to watch the little piglets that were being born.  He came to my stall and mother ran to him.  He gave her some cinnamon sticks, then looked at me. My ears pricked up wondering what he was going to do.  He looked me over, then said to himself, “A filly…. black coat and a white star on its forehead…”

           “Grace!  Lilly! Come over!” He said,

A girl and a woman ran over.  The girl nearly gasped.  “It’s so   pretty!”  She squealed.

The girl was Lilly and the woman was Grace.

“What should we call her?” The man wondered.

“How about Midnight Forest?” Lilly asked.

“That’s a great name for her!” Grace replied.

Then the man walked to the pigpen.  “Patch should be having piglets either now or soon.”  He said as he walked.  Grace and Lilly followed him.

       “Patch’s having the piglets!” he said to Grace and Lilly, when he got there.  Soon nine piglets were born—six males, and three females.

       “I’ll go get Patch and Spot’s feed.”  Grace said.

My father was right next to my mother’s stall.  My mother sometimes stood up and talked with my father.  My mother was called Ruby, and my father was Rain.

       “Mommy, can I ride Rain?” Lilly asked.

       “Okay, but first, go feed the cows and chickens.” Grace said.

Lilly nodded and ran for the corn.  Then she fed the pigs, and rushed back out with grass and a few kinds of veggie and fed the cows.  After that, she got into proper clothes, and led Rain out of his stall.  Then she sprang up onto the saddle and took the reins.

She was galloping in the field when Grace said, “Lilly!  Want to go hacking?  I’ll be riding Rocky.”

       “Wait, first can I jump the fences?”  Lilly asked.  “Sure, but be      careful!”  Grace said.

I looked out the window, and saw my father leaping the fences.  My mother looked too.  Soon, I saw Grace tacking up Rocky.  Grace gave him a banana, then brought him outside.

       “Daddy’s coming on Chester.” Grace said.

       “Okay.”  Lilly replied.

Soon, the man came out of the barn with a chestnut horse.  I watched them leave until they disappeared down the road.  Ten minutes after they left, my mother nursed me.

Suddenly a loud rumble of thunder came, and a flash of lightning spread across the sky.  Then, a gust of wind blew some straw out of my mother’s stall.  She curled around me, and whinnied to me, saying “Snuggle up.  It’s cold.”  I snuggled with her until I was warm away from the gust of wind.

Then Grace, Lilly, and the man came in.  Rocky and Rain seemed quite scared.  Rain snorted, and Rocky whinnied.  But Chester nickered, as if saying, “I’m with my friends. I don’t have to be scared.”

The man filled my mother’s bucket of water and gave her a meal, that to her, was the best.  Grace and Lilly closed all the doors and windows because the weather had gotten really bad at the first strike of lightning.

       “Mom, how come you didn’t tell me that the weather was going to be like this?”  Lilly said, forcing a window to close over the strong wind that was blowing the horse all over the place.

       “Lilly, I and daddy checked the weather forecast this morning, it didn’t say anything about the storm.”  Grace explained.

The next day, I was turned out into the meadow with my mother and Chester for the first time in my life.  I was excited about how the bugs were flying, but my mother and Chester were very used to it.  So when I saw a bee, I nickered and pranced after it.  The bees thought that I was going to kill it, so it charged towards me.

My mother whinnied a warning and Chester snorted, saying “Midnight Forest! Get back here!  Bees are dangerous!”  My mother snorted back at Chester, as if to say, “She’s two days old!  You shouldn’t expect her to know what a bee is!”

Chester snorted back, getting them both into an argument and saying, “I know what a bee was when I was two days old!  She should too!”

“Not all foals are the same!”  My mother whinnied.

“Who’s arguing over a bee?”  A taller horse asked from the stable.

Chester glared at the mare in the stable, and said nothing.

Ever since that day, I kept away from bees.

(To be continued)