Title: A Horse of a Different Colour Author: Daegaer Rating: G Author's Notes: Long ago, afrai says, she suggested to the list that there should be a story about Aziraphale the Horse. She suggested it to me, too. So here it is. Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. A Horse of a Different Colour One day, Aziraphale discovered he was a horse. This worried him a great deal, as he was fairly sure he at one point had had only two legs and preferred duck a l'orange to fresh grass. Thinking about his previous tastes in meals brought an even more worrying idea to mind, and he approached the donkey peaceably grazing in the corner of the field. "Excuse me, old chap," he said. "I was wondering where I am. Please tell me this isn't Belgium." "Naw, mate," the donkey said. "It's the field." "Hmm. Thank you," Aziraphale said, and had a few mouthfuls of grass to settle his nerves. He surreptitiously peered at the donkey. It seemed to have a vaguely English accent. If he were on the continent, surely the donkey would have spoken French? Or Flemish, or something? After another half hour of chewing vegetation it occurred to him that donkeys usually didn't speak English or French or indeed any other language than -- well, donkey, he supposed. He sidled up to it again. "Excuse me. What language do you speak?" The donkey looked at him strangely and walked off. That night a young person put him in a stable. Aziraphale had a soft spot for stables. He seemed to remember seeing something Terribly Important happening in one once, although he felt a little unsure of the details at the moment. This stable had rather important things in it, like a familiar stall with lots of nice hay in the hayrack, and clean, cool water to drink. The young person patted him on the rump, said things to him and installed the donkey next door. Aziraphale peered over the dividing wall. "Good evening. Um. Have we been introduced?" The donkey flicked an ear and kept chewing its mouthful of hay. "Don't get me wrong, mate," it said indistinctly, "but you horses aren't so bright. I've been your stablemate for ages." "Oh. Sorry. How long?" The donkey took another mouthful. It flicked an ear again. "Dunno exactly. Ages. More than a few days." "Ah. And you are?" "A donkey." "Ah." The donkey heaved a sigh. "No, don't tell me. The next question is 'And I am?' Right?" Aziraphale wished he had thumbs to twiddle. He settled for a bashful inquisitive look through his really rather extravagantly long eyelashes. He became so distracted trying to see them that he almost missed what the donkey was saying. "You're a horse. A sort of brownish horse. There was a sort of whitish horse here before. But you're sort of brownish." Oh. Well, that cleared that up. The donkey went back to eating, and Aziraphale went back to being distracted every time he blinked. Eventually he remembered to eat his hay. * * * The next morning the young person came back and spent rather a long time mucking out the stables. Aziraphale felt it was rather a hard job for a lady. He didn't quite know how to offer to help, though. She then spent quite some time brushing him, which was very pleasant. "Who is this young person?" he asked the donkey. "Annie," the donkey said, sticking its nose into her hand. "Ah. What's an Annie?" "She is." Aziraphale felt he was missing something, but then Annie held out a hand with what he could positively identify as sugar cubes resting on her palm. They were delicious. "Thank you very much, dear," he said. The donkey was looking at him oddly again. * * * The days blended into each other. Aziraphale quite forgot that any food nicer than sugar cubes existed. He felt quite peaceful and happy, even if the donkey wasn't the world's greatest conversationalist. When it wanted to, however, it always said things worth listening to. As it did one afternoon when they were no longer interested in staring at nothing. "Hey, watch out, mate," the donkey said. "Something bad's coming." Aziraphale looked up. Annie was walking across the field towards them. There was something very bad with her. Aziraphale sniffed the air. He could smell grass, and the donkey, and Annie and -- nothing from the bad thing. It moved easily and lazy beside Annie, speaking to her in a calm, bad voice. The donkey backed off a few steps. "C'mon, mate. Let's go to the other side of the field," it said. Aziraphale took a few steps after it. He was suddenly convinced that it was very very important to do horse-like things. The bad thing would go away then. Annie would make it go away. He looked out of the corner of his eye. Annie looked quite small beside the bad thing. It wanted her to think it was a person, Aziraphale realised. She didn't know it was a bad thing. He reluctantly turned to face them, ready to run at the slightest threat. Annie made the noise she made when she was happy, and the bad thing pretended to make the same noise. Aziraphale heard it as a long low hiss. They stopped in front of him, and Annie patted his neck, speaking to him. The bad thing stayed there, coiled in the grass, looking at him. It suddenly showed off its fangs, and uncoiled. Aziraphale reared up and trampled it down, then ran off. "Did you get it? Did you get it?" the donkey asked when he came up. "I hit it," Aziraphale said. "I don't want to look at it. What's it doing?" "It's getting off the ground," the donkey said. "It's sort of leaning on Annie. And it's saying all sorts of loud stuff." Aziraphale could hear the loud stuff. The bad thing seemed unhappy. He turned round and saw it glare in his direction. Then it touched Annie on the head and she stood quite still. It came across the field, fast and smooth. "What are we going to do?" Aziraphale asked in worry. "You've got longer legs. You might want to jump the fence," the donkey said. "Me, I'm going to run round in a panic." It ran away. Aziraphale tried to decide which fence to jump, then suddenly the bad thing had grabbed him. He reared up again, trying to get it to let go of his mane. It was shouting and hissing in his ear. No matter what he did, it wouldn't let go, even when he kicked sideways and heard a bone snap. All the fight went out of him suddenly, and he stood there in terror as it put a hand flat on his head. It kept saying the same thing, over and over. The sound suddenly resolved itself into sense. *Aziraphale.* That was -- him. He was Aziraphale. He leaned on the bad thing, and stumbled. And was clinging to Crowley, who was holding him up. "You're all right, you're all right," Crowley said comfortingly, then yelled "You kicked me in the head, you bastard! Is that the kind of thanks I get? And you broke my shin! Damn it, why are you so bloody stupid?" Aziraphale looked at the blood running down Crowley's face. It looked like sheer spite was keeping him on his feet. He shakily wiped some of the blood away and healed the various fractures. Some of the stress went out of Crowley's face, but not the annoyance. Aziraphale let go of him and stood by himself. "What's been going on?" he said. Crowley looked off to one side. He seemed a little embarrassed. "We, er, had a fight. I said some stuff I shouldn't have." "You said I ate like a horse and was a big, dumb animal," Aziraphale said slowly. Crowley looked more embarrassed. "Ah. You remember. I was sort of hoping you wouldn't. It was pretty funny, actually. Until you ran off. Idiot. Why'd you run off?" "You're an enormous snake." Crowley looked askance at him. "Look, I'm sorry, but there's no need to --" "*No.* I ran off because you looked like a big snake. Really quite scary." "Oh," Crowley said. "I always wondered why I didn't get on with horses. Thank G- . . . Henry Ford for cars. How scary?" Aziraphale looked at him sternly, and he shut up. "What about Annie?" Aziraphale asked. "Oh. She said you turned up here and she's had her parents putting notices in the papers, and she rang the police to say she'd found you. You had a spot on "Animal Rescue", that's how I knew to come out here. Let's get out of here." Aziraphale looked at him stubbornly. "Leave her some money. I don't have any on me, but don't worry, I'll make sure you're not out of pocket." "You don't have *anything* on you," Crowley said cheerfully. "OK, OK. I'll leave her some. And she'll just remember that you've gone home, fair enough? You really ought to put some clothes on, though." Aziraphale thought of his normal attire, and immediately felt a lot warmer. They negotiated their way back across the field. Aziraphale waved at the donkey, which flicked its ear at him. He made sure Crowley left a decent wad of banknotes with Annie, and settled gratefully into the passenger seat of the Bentley. "I'm starving," he said. "Yeah, well you've been eating grass for a few weeks," Crowley said as he reversed out of the stable yard. "Like that Babylonian guy, remember him?" "Hmph. I believe that under the circumstances you owe me dinner. I want duck a l'orange, and I want *no* personal comments from you. Ever again." "I can promise the dinner, at least," Crowley said, with a sly smile. "But you shouldn't hold a grudge. Most unangelic. I was only horsing around -- ow!" Aziraphale rubbed his elbow. He hadn't meant to hit quite so hard, but didn't feel one bit sorry. "Whoops," he said. "Just a bit of horse play." Crowley took his hands off the wheel, menacingly. All in all, it was a good job the Bentley could practically drive itself.