Water Horse

Lunar New Year fell on Feb 17. Anyone born before that date belongs to the previous year (Snake).

Horses need to be moving, even if it is just a different route home. The phrase let us wait sits badly with them, so they would rather start running and correct the direction later. Enthusiasm arrives fast, three things get lit at once, and something shiny can pull them off course halfway. They come across as open, brisk, unable to sit still. The fear underneath is not exhaustion but enclosure: a room without an exit rattles them more than a long day on the road. Ask them to describe next year and you get a shrug and a list of places.

The ground goes pale and the horse keeps running in the heat, sweat drying as it forms, vapour rising into cloud and coming back down as rain. People like this work in jumps rather than steps: a burst, then a rest, landing wherever the landing happens. Strength is not the shortage, patience is. Heated, they charge; cooled, they stop. It looks random from outside, though a rough direction is usually in mind and the next jump gets chosen in mid-air.