Haiku: Epilogue
* * *They left the city at dawn and as the sun came up they were on the outskirts, moving towards the thin pink line.
The clop of hooves could be heard on the pavement. It was a gentle sound, not hard-edged, because these horses weren’t wearing iron shoes like domesticated horses often do. As they left the streets and went into the wilderness at the final borders of the city, the sound changed from light clops to deep beats in the sand.
They went down the edge of the road where yellow-green grass grew in the cracks and down through a ditch that had collected broken branches, broken bottles, pieces of metal that could no longer be identified. Ashe hung onto the neck of one of the horses as they did, the larger one, lifting her legs and keeping her soft white feet out of it.
They passed through some trees that had many thin leaves; she had seen them at the borders of the desert before but she didn’t know what they were called. They produced an odd fruit that looked like a pea pod. After the trees were short scrub bushes of different types, all with prickly sharp leaves and many years of dense growth in the places they had managed to dominate.
After that they crossed a dry riverbed and after that the land opened up but did not become easier. Ashe began to lag behind, stepping lightly on the broken ground. The larger horse went to a tall boulder and waited by it, and Ashe climbed up it and then onto the horse, and she clamped her legs over its sides and put her hands in its mane and they went on.