Last time I saw Emma and Holly, at the beginning of April, they were still cocooned in their winter coats.

Now that they have emerged, Holly is still the steady anchor, but Emma has been transformed from a shy, anxious filly to something of a social butterfly.

Dr. Hannah Evergreen and her assistant Kelsey are on hand to give Emma and Holly their spring vaccinations, and when Dr. Hannah remarks on Emma's transformation, Merle Swan gives the credit her husband John.

While Emma would come up to Merle for scratches and haltering, she had not yet reliably extended her trust to other humans. When Merle was away for a week, John was responsible for the feeding and care of all their horses. He decided this was a good time to win Emma over. By the time Merle returned, John had a new friend.

Emma is now giving the benefit of the doubt even to those she has just met. She hasn't entirely lost her ethereal, enchanted quality, though.

Perhaps that is due to the setting. The field is still ringed with cedars on a grand scale, and flowers are scattered in the grass. Moss covers stray boulders, and stumps are decorated with fairy-tale fungi.

The forest guards the pasture here, plants sentinels and waits, quietly. It shelters and protects the fillies that dance across the daisies, its force held in abeyance by human hands.

Holly and Emma are thriving, with no signs of permanent damage from a darker day in their history, when they were found on the Carnation farm of Jean Elledge along with four dead horses. It is maybe harder for some of the humans to shed that burden.

Dr. Hannah told me a few weeks ago that she can no longer look at a blue tarp on a farm without the fleeting thought that it might hide the body of a horse.

That makes her moments with Holly and Emma more poignant, and when she thanks Merle for the good care and the fostering of trust, it resonates with the timbre of healing.

For each of these horses we want a fairytale ending, an enchanted relationship, a permanent redemption from loss and suffering -- if they can have it, perhaps we can too.