No one knows where the black horse came from, and no one thought to ask.

In the depths of winter, where Minor Cold and Major Cold fold into each other, all things seem settled. The classical columns have stood there for ages; the withered stalks, too. Like us — frozen by the season — held in place at our appointed coordinates, suspended for far longer than we ever consciously knew.

Then came the moment the black horse leapt through the air — and it felt less like an event than a secret we had always carried inside us, wordless and unnameable, suddenly taking form in the half-light of early spring. The vast order of things did not shatter. It only shifted, slightly, stepping aside with something close to tenderness — as if even this bright red wall and its rigid corridors had long been waiting, quietly, for someone to come and tear wildly through.

We spent an entire winter in stillness, waiting for this moment. Not a beginning in any conventional sense — but the instant the ice begins to give: when you are standing between cold stone columns and swaying dry stalks, and you feel, suddenly, that somewhere ahead, some possibility, has opened — one you can finally throw yourself toward.

The crack of firecrackers rings out for this decisive breaking-through. The fireworks rise for this invisible crossing. And before the early spring rain falls and softens everything, we stay a little longer where we are, watching the arc of that trail, and say to one another, quietly: Happy New Year.

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