In a time long before ours, when the wild horses and Native Americans roamed the States, all horses were born either solid white or solid black. Over time, the Indians were soon bored with these two colors, so they developed what we now know as the Paint horse. Every spring when the mares of the thousands of herds give birth to new horse life, all the new foals are raised by the Indians, then, at the age of three are painted. Each horse gets a different design or pattern decorated on his or her coat with all different shades of browns, blacks, crèmes, gold, silvers and burgundies. In this time of age however, a horse was only as beautiful as its colors and unique design.


Larus was born in a usual way. His mother, Bella, was beautiful palomino paint whose golden mane was the envy of all, and his father, Cyril, who was also known for his masculine beauty, was proud of their new son. Larus was born with a scraggly white coat and a few wisps of white for his mane and tail. His legs were unusually knobby and his head was out of proportion with his somewhat large body. But even though his appearance wasn’t as grand as his parents were, his parents still loved him all the same.

Through the years, Larus grew as any normal little horse would. But Larus was strangely different from the other young horses. He saw past the attractive colors that supposly made a horse beautiful. You see, Larus saw the inside. Although Larus did think the colors were stunning, but he believed a horse needed more than just exquisite colors and design to make him or her beautiful. Integrity was beautiful to Larus. Kindness, forgiveness, good stewardship, and peace were beautiful to Larus. Other horses looked down on Larus for his beliefs. His parents were concerned. But Larus stood strong in his principle, that a horse shouldn’t be judged by its outside, but instead by its individuality.

As Larus’s third birthday approached, Larus announced that he didn’t want to get painted. He wanted to stay his unsightly scraggly white. The news came as quite a shock to his devoted parents. They tried to convince Larus other wise, that he would be insanely ridiculed and looked down upon. But Larus still stood strong.

Larus’s third birthday came and went and Larus was still white. All of his friends had been painted gorgeous colors, which they flaunted every day to Larus, taunting him with their glorious coats. Larus was told by his friends that he would never be beautiful, and that he would always be the ugly smudge that he was declared to be, but Larus never felt the need to prove himself to anyone, for any reason. Larus was deeply saddened by their spiteful words, but he only replied forgivingly to his judgers, “One day, you’ll see. One day, you will understand.” And at that, his friends would only laugh, prance and taunt him some more.

It was a bright and sunny day that Larus would discover something that would change his future forever. Larus was grazing lazily about when all of a sudden; it began snowing, in the middle of summer. Confused, he looked around to see if anyone else noticed, but no one gave notice to the odd white particles floating about. Larus went from confused, to down right scared. He tried to shake the snow off, but the more he shook the more snowy stuff came down. That’s odd…it’s not cold. Larus thought to himself. So he stuck out his big soggy tongue. A piece of the snow landed square on his tongue. As he brought his tongue back into his mouth he noticed it wasn’t snow at all. It was fuzzy. Larus looked around and saw that no one else had snow around them. That could only mean one thing. Larus was shedding. But as he looked at his body to see how much fur he lost, he noticed vibrant dashes of blue and pink! As he looked farther on down his legs he saw bright yellows and reds. Never before had a horse been born with colors like this, or even colors at all! Soon other horses saw Larus’s extreme new coloring. They said things like, “Wow, look at Larus. He’s beautiful,” or, “It’s amazing! He is so unique.”

Because of Larus’s perseverance of persecution, Larus had been painted the most beautiful of all.