Manzanilla arrived in Vesland as part of a goodwill exchange between breeders — a gift from an Andalusian stud famed for its old Carthusian lines. She was meant to be a gesture of friendship, not a working horse: gold-coated, elegantly plaited, stepping from the trailer into a foreign spring mist.
But the journey north had been long and cold. When the crate opened, the mare that stepped down was travel-worn and hollow-eyed, her proud arch dulled by fatigue. The grooms muttered that her spirit had been left somewhere along the coast. They said she was beautiful, but “difficult.”
Shariif had not come for her. He was there to assess a few young baroque geldings, the kind that might fit into Eisenhof’s growing program. Yet as he walked past her stall, Manzanilla lifted her head and met his eyes — still, searching, unguarded. It wasn’t defiance he saw there, but endurance. Something wordless passed between them, old as trust itself.
He asked to handle her. The stable hands warned him she didn’t lead, that she’d snapped a halter on the journey. Still, Shariif stepped into the stall, spoke softly, and waited. After a long pause, the mare lowered her head and followed him out, her hooves ringing against the cobblestones like a promise rediscovered.
By dusk, she grazed quietly beside him in the training field, the sunset burning copper across her coat. She moved with a rhythm that didn’t belong to this country — something deeper, older, like memory taking form. Shariif watched her and thought, some spirits are not to be broken, only understood.
When she came to Eisenhof, Manzanilla became more than a symbol of exchange. She was the soul of Shariif’s vision — a living reminder that grace and power could coexist, and that the past, if treated gently, could still teach the present how to breathe.