Stylised horse head design in pencil

The tide was out when Mr Pascoe brought the grey round to the slipway, and you'll not believe the state of him. Three days hauling stone along the breakwater and still he carries his head high, ears pricked at the gulls, nose turned to the cliff as if he's reading something written there. I've stopped telling the others he's nothing special. They'd only laugh, and then they'd go quiet and watch him too.

Mrs Trevithick at the boarding house wants the cart on the front by ten for the Saturday lot, so we load the bags before the light comes up. The mane is the thing. It lifts off his neck in long dark strokes whenever the wind comes off the water, tapering to a point like a brushed-on wave, and when he turns to look at you it's as if the whole sky has been dragged sideways behind him.

Last Tuesday he went sideways into the harbour wall and I thought we'd lost him. He stood there with the sea slapping his legs, grey as the paper in an old ledger, the light coming through the spray in patches. I knelt and held his face in both hands and he breathed out so hard I felt it in my teeth. Then he shook himself and walked up the slip as if nothing had happened.

I'm writing because I want you to come down before the season ends. Bring the good boots. Walk the strand with me at low water and you'll see where his prints go, long and deep, each stride gathering at the end like a stroke lifted off the page. The tide fills them every evening. By morning they're gone, and by the next dusk he's made new ones.

Yours in haste, Tom