The Wanderings of Brindleback & Tallow

They called the land Stillwater Range, though it wasn’t named for any body of water. It was named for the way the world felt there—quiet, thoughtful, steady as a held breath. Cornfields stretched to the horizon, tallgrass moved like whispers, and the wind carried stories older than any fence post. Few travelers passed through on purpose, but those who did always learned something before they left.

Brindleback, the donkey Ranger, knew every inch of Stillwater Range. He’d walked it since he was barely taller than a seed sack. His wooden wheel—his trusted companion—rolled beside him everywhere he went. “A wheel reminds you that everything comes around,” he liked to say. “Lessons, troubles, blessings… they all circle back.” He wasn’t a flashy Ranger, but he was a reliable one, and reliability was its own kind of magic.

Then came Tallow, the young alpaca whose curiosity arrived three steps before she did. She showed up on a morning when the mist still clung to the soil, her backpack nearly as large as her head, her scarf a warm bit of color in the otherwise pale dawn. She’d been following the wind for days, convinced something important was waiting for her.

Brindleback found her tangled in a bramble patch, mumbling about “unexpected vegetation ambushes.” Instead of laughing, he held the branches steady so she could wiggle free. That was how Tallow first learned what Stillwater Range really taught: not strength, not speed—but steadiness.

Tallow asked questions the entire walk back to the main road. Why did the clouds move faster here? Did the grass hum at night? Why did his wheel squeak on the left and not the right? Brindleback answered what he could and chuckled at what he couldn’t. He hadn’t expected a companion that day, but Stillwater Range had a way of giving you what you didn’t realize you needed.

Over the following days, Brindleback watched Tallow stumble, wobble, and rise again. She tripped over fence posts she swore hadn’t been there a moment before. She got distracted by butterflies, barn swallows, and once—much to Brindleback’s alarm—a rolling tumbleweed she tried to befriend. But she also noticed things he’d stopped seeing: the way the color of the wheat changed just before rain, the soft paths deer carved under the cottonwoods, the tiny sparks of fireflies who woke early just to greet the dusk.

One evening, while the sun spilled gold across the plains, Tallow finally asked the question she’d been carrying since the morning she met him. “Brindleback… why me? You’re a Ranger. I’m just… learning.” Brindleback set his wheel against a fallen log and looked at her with kind, steady eyes.

“Every Ranger started with a wobble,” he said. “But not every wobble turns into a walk, and not every walk turns into a path. You? You’re on your way to becoming something strong. I can see it. Stillwater Range can, too.”

That night, the prairie wind shifted, rolling in soft and warm. Tallow leaned into it and felt something anchor inside her—a sense that she belonged, even if she didn’t know exactly how yet. She didn’t have Brindleback’s steadiness or his experience, but she had heart, and sometimes that was the first key a Ranger needed.

Together, they continued through Stillwater Range—Brindleback guiding, Tallow learning, each of them surprising the other in small ways. And though the land hadn’t changed, it felt different somehow. Brighter. Fuller. As if the plains themselves understood that a new story had begun to walk its way across the fields.

By the time the fireflies rose that night, the two of them were no longer Ranger and apprentice, or guide and wanderer. They were companions on the same dusty road. And in Stillwater Range, that meant everything.