The yeoman didn’t near the colt as she swam past him by the blowdown. The shore was just there and still very nice. Dry. The colt was enormous and sad. He snorted at the yeoman as if she were an enemy. Night came and she listened to his bellows. Three eons since barbed wire but the colt knew it still, memory of rust, ripped flesh, wolves. The wolves were thick on the West Sea but slept daytimes and when storms came. It was a dull name: West Sea.

What was an eon? Who decided?

The tide came in and swept the blowdown out. Behind the storm the moon glowed through in breaks in clouds. She crouched in the seagrass. Gulls nested safe in holes on cliffs. Nothing could reach them. There was a whole herd, the huge Mule in their midst. She saw them in retreating flashes of lightning.

On the West Sea—she’d heard at mess—the cedars were truly worth study.

Silly thought. It was better to smell them. Sit.

Several varieties were mixed with redwoods and sequoia all the way north to the chilly wide expanses, ha ha ha, where the New Mules would await another Heat Event to restore grasses to the great flat plains that arched to the East Sea where trees grew to more modest height since winds whipped the biggest off cliffs to jam the shores of archipelagos beginning the next great land bridge.

She laughed and laughed. There was plenty of food for all. Seaweed. Snails. The berries were every color. Red. Purple. Blue gone waxy-pink, dried, crushed, smeared on ferns. She needed no fire. The worst thing about berries: they got dull.

At mess, they would have eaten the last pie. This was her last thought of them.

Rain all night. Sun all day. She kept the herd in view or within her sharpened earshot.

It was warm enough for no coat mostly. No winter. It was the eternal time of the unwitnessed.

HER NOTE: The Mule is “Adam,” a mythological reference. The Filly is “Eve.”