"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion." How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy." Psalm 137:1-6
I walked down one early morn by the Tarkaan's paddock, through the mist and gossamer, my heart heavy in my chest. The beauty of the morning was lost to me as I wandered in a daze. I had had a dream last night, a dream of silver dryads dancing through the rain, a dream where the sun came up at night and shed dark light on the land of my youth. I could not understand it, it lay so ill in my belly. If only I could run free, just once, I thought, to that rise of grass over the stone wall and pause against the skyline, free!
Suddenly the air was pieced with the eerie call of the wild geese in their grey skein flying north. At once the heaviness of my heart was gone, and with a cry as wild as their own I flew across the paddock, racing down the hill and up again, following their flight northward until—oh, misery! I crashed against the stone wall that was my prison; I could go no further; the heaviness returned as I watched as long as I could my free northern brethren flying away in their arrow, flying away to the North.
I turned away and limped to the stream, leaning against the tamarisk tree, weeping bitter tears for Narnia. How I loved thee, my homeland, my heartland! I wanted to lose myself in her memories as weary men will lose themselves in much wine. For while bitter, those memories were sweet at the same time. But I was not alone. Up through the grass came other horses, dumb horses, who know only that I was a captive as they were.
"Tell us about your life outside the Wall," they said cheerfully, wanting nothing but a good story.
I shook my head and turned away. How could I speak of it to them? They knew nothing of the rolling moorlands, the arching sky shot through with azure clarity. They knew nothing of what it was to be Narnian, to serve the name of Aslan, to swear upon his Mane. I ran from their exhortations, ran with my tears blinding my eyes until I found myself in the farthest meadow of the Tarkaan's paddock. I raised my head to the sky—that hateful Calormene sky pale as yellow wine, not rich as my sky was—and closed my eyes. Sometimes, I thought I could just see it: one tiny blade of Narnian grass. Sometimes, I thought I could just feel it: the shade of a Narnian tree. But it was empty now, nothing but memory. Still, I narrowed my eyes when I opened them. I would not forget. They could make me slave, make me work, make me close my mouth forever. But I would not forget Narnian, not until my dying day. She was all I lived for, her memory, her truth. She is my home, my life, my love: the scent of dampened scrub or hawthorn dry as summer. As a true Talking Horse if Narnia, I swore there in the paddock of my prison that not one day would pass in which I had not charted the history of my country, not spoken the name of Aslan at least in whisper, not dreamt of all I left behind and tasted my bitter tears.