#and grabbed his halter and yanked his head towards him so hard my horse got pushed off balance and his ears went back

[dreamboyf]

theres a chiro that my boss pays to come out to the barn every few weeks and its so wild to watch him spend less than 10 mins on each horse just kinda pushing their bodies around and going "oh yes that was very tight in the [body part] there mhmm" clearly doing absolutely fuckall. sometimes their joints crack which ofc justifies the whole charade. and the man fucking CLEANS UP too. charges $65 flat rate per horse. he comes out and makes more than i do in a day in less than an hour and fucks off to go scam other people. maddening. if i wanted to stoop low enough to be a grifter id be an equine chiropractor

[stronghours]

SUNSHINE IN THE SKY REPRISE

And it came to pass, a few weeks after she and Jules made a bad decision on his thrifted futon, that they met again during 4th of July merrymaking. 

Lux toddled in grey lake water among Ava, Claire, and Archie (Celeste down and out with summer flu). Lux couldn’t swim, a fact disclosed in private to Ava, which Ava hadn’t kept to herself, and the group formed a stooped, anxious ring around her doggy-paddling. She was forced, among the smell of hot dogs in the safe green grass hundreds of yards beyond and the ominous cloud cover above, to make sure only her ass whomped her protectors’ knees when the waves tried to boil her body up and away. She’d made a mistake, and her only wardrobe protection beyond her suit itself and her spandex underthing was a hastily added solid color sarong, which while dry didn’t match, and while wet, just looked lousy and modest. But she couldn’t be parted with it and had made up a past bout of minor skin cancer, a pin-mole insidiously located on her protected inner thigh, the paranoia of which haunted her still. Even Ava dropped her chin for the C-word.

Now she suggested Lux float on her back and allow her perception of the water to form fingers in the magic slot located on her lower back, and soon she’d be floating like crazy among the wacky kids and her hot workmates and her boss and all their invisible pubes. A wave slapped dirty fingers up Lux’s nose.

“It’s kind of like learning a language,” Archie contributed. “Got to learn it when you’re young. Looks like your parents fucking doomed you.”

“My pap pap slam-dunked me in our above-ground when I was five,” said Claire, who floated tummy-down in frog position by exerting no effort Lux could observe. “I bobbed right back up, but like, what if I hadn’t?”

Lux, six feet tall, decided to use it to her advantage and planted her knees in the sandbar. She could just about do it and keep her eyes and forehead in periscope position.

“Reuben and I are thinking of installing an above-ground,” said Ava, and seeing Lux shrink, rose to her feet and splashed water across her dewy collarbone. Lux pushed every single one of them out of her mind and stared between the chops out into the open sea to make-believe Michigan somewhere on the other side. A rhythmic slap approached from the left and the white bow of a lifeguard’s canoe sailed past their collected heads.

“Hey now,” scolded the familiar voice behind the sunglasses, “only three hot bitches are allowed in the water at a time. Think of the community.”

Ava sloshed around at the familiarity, but everybody else had already noticed it was, absurdly, Jules, and sent up a bunch of soggy greetings, all except Lux who rose into a semi-crouch in the drifting seabed out of surprise, and Ava, who let them all perform verbal recognition on her behalf and only spared a nod.

Jules looked very high school, very lanky on the bobbing bench, with the oars braced under his tanned arms and his cute red tank top cinched under his fanny pack. He rode the up-down of the surf the same way he did most things, with enough bored grace to suggest he’d learned quite enough and had more interesting things to do. Lux had recently learned this conceit of his could be bypassed, and she was glad he kept the sunglasses on when he looked her over.

“What’s up Cathy,” he said, with the same Sophomore carelessness, and she plunged her head under an oncoming wave, the pressure preferable to the dawning knowledge that now, he had information he could disclose, and he’d had it for weeks.

She rose again, squinting. She couldn’t tell if he had caught on.

“What?” he asked. “What did I do?”

“You got another job, Jules?” Ava surged forward, displaced Lux. “Roscoe doesn’t give you enough to do, on top of commissions?”

“Give me another commission and you’ll find out.” He drew the left oar’s pole hard under his titty to keep the nose of the canoe from slicing into their crescent. The mechanism bucked like a horse and the wind snatched the ugly white hat off his head and toward an oblivion of preteens due north. Claire yelped and threw herself into the water, rippled away to go fetch it. “You ever been in the cellar underneath Rawhide, Ava? That’s like, thrice-darkness. I was gonna kill myself.”

“I’ve never been in a situation that required me to be in the cellar underneath Rawhide.” Prim Ava glanced pityingly at Lux, who allowed wave after wave to pummel her head in her effort to stay low. “Poor baby. She can’t swim.”

“Throw her off the pier,” Jules suggested.

“It worked for Claire’s pap pap,” Archie said, and braced an annoying hand on the back of Lux’s neck. “Sorry babe, looks like you’re going down.”

Lux threw herself underwater before Archie could push her into the drink. Beneath the top swell she had enough time to touch her palms to the sand and try to dig her hands where she’d braced her knees, but she was blind, and the divots were washed away and the grains were swept off and replaced swept off and replaced, and she panicked when the water tugged the sarong’s knot. She resurfaced from the green and grey, coughing and yanking the weedy fabric around her legs. Ava, shining and petite against the sky, so securely tucked to smoothness, had finished with Jules herself and was high stepping back to shore.

“…I’m just saying, you should definitely try it out –” Archie had spoken in the interim. Jules was nodding. He’d shoved the sunglasses up and over his curly head and while his gaze was trained forward to take in the gamboling bathers, Lux could feel him keeping her in the corner of his eye.

 -

She remembered being in good if overenergetic spirits. She recalled a hot yellow sun. She wore her lavender halter with the powder-blue culottes, her hair freshly hennaed from the night before and trustily bunned. She traveled from a three-hour duo with Ava regarding some mind-numbing bouts of predicament ropework that left her guiltily bored of the client and his ballerina snobbishness, but pleased with her improving knots, and with the fact she could at least trick Ava into thinking she was a viable rope top. She’d exited the bus prematurely and entered the sidewalk throng to burn through her constipated spirits, past a raucous patio partition of a dippy sport’s bar and collided with Jules himself, exiting.

It was like striking a human-size grasshopper. He recoiled, elbows up, and almost upset a busboy’s tray. She reared at his excess, ready to dive into the full indulgence of her insult. In the past year after the Annelise Petro incident she’d only seen him at a distance. Their last words, exchanged in close quarters within Jules’s car more than twelve months ago, had not been civil. He was much tanner than she remembered of him in previous summers. He’d filled out in the chest and shoulders. For a second, she could glimpse he’d gained some weird physical vitality – but as she observed, the color drained from his face. His shoulders slumped. He looked sick as a dog. She’d thought he was drunk.

She grabbed him by the shoulders and steered his head away from her. “Do not,” she ordered, “Do not fucking puke on me.”

He pulled himself straight but didn’t dislodge from her grip. “Don’t say anything,” he hissed, dirt-sober, and before she could make him clarify, a middle-aged couple loomed over his shoulders. The woman, a full six inches shorter than both Lux and Jules (it was just then Lux realized she and Jules were precisely the same height) sparkled nervously, trussed in Cubs blues.

“Oh Jules,” she said, “Who’s this?”

She was blond and ferrety, but in the man, Lux could see a sour and fleshy shadow of Jules’s own face and bearing. He looked at her with the same stern contemplation Jules had leveled on her in the past, and Jules presently, dead in the eyes, curled in on himself like a shrimp.

She’d inexplicably exited her rancorous ditch and stumbled over Jules in the no-man’s land of Blood Relatives. She wanted to, against all rational thought, shove him behind her back and put her arms out.

Instead, she reached a hand to the man (dad? Oh boy, what fun) and chirped, “Hi, I’m Catherine!”

And to the woman (mother? God in heaven), “don’t we just all love Jules!”

The woman shriveled with feeling that hardly looked like relief. The man gravely shook Lux’s hand, and she was pleased with his grip’s condescending pressure. Her body moved far ahead of her brain. She could see herself at distance, popping one toe behind her planted heel, one hip cocked, tits pushed out, but no further than her glowing smile. “And how do you two know each other,” the man said, said, explicitly did not ask. Neither man nor woman introduced themselves.

Jules, white-lipped, opened his mouth but Lux flowed over him. “2007,” she answered, “Leidermeister Playhouse, down in, uh, are you from around here? No? Well, Tinley-ish. Way down there. Spring musical. I was on playbill. And Jules was doing costumes for Pippin.”

For the first time, Jules treated her to the sweet sight of his smug, sick face struck totally dumb.

“Theater!” The woman bubbled. She put her hand on her companion’s meaty forearm, placating.

But the man was not letting her go without a fight. “Theater,” he said. “And what part did you play.”

She treated him to her glowing smile first (cracking, a little). If Jules had learned his own abysmal manners from these creeps, then he’d somehow made improvements on his own time.

“The Mother,” she improvised. “Of course.”

“Stepmother,” Jules piped up, at last.

It was all yadda-yadda to Lux, but the man finally checked the neon dial of his watch, gripped the woman by the elbow, said they would have to start taking pains for a cab if they wanted to catch the game in time. “Sure,” Jules said, though his permission hadn’t been asked, his advice unsought. “You’re not far away.”

“You call her and say you saw us, sir,” the man said. “She’ll expect it.”

Jules was too busy accepting limp patty-pats from the woman, who shot Lux a tragic grin before she scampered up the sidewalk, followed by the broad back of her presumed husband. No proper hug, no I-Love-You, no masculine head smacks or back whacks or take-care-of-yourself-you-hear pronouncements. They just walked away. Her own parents would be appalled.

The life was coming back to Jules’s face, but he was still doubled over, as if from a cramp. “Jiminy Christmas,” he uttered, and she wanted, in a surge, nothing more than to pinch his cheeks and trap his head in her armpit and noogie him to death and bust his fluff. Instead, she assisted him away from the crowd, and before long they strolled down a quiet residential street, arm in arm. She decided to give him five whole minutes to recover from the encounter, but he did it in two.

“Ledermeister,” he said to her, appalled.

“Leider,” she corrected.

“You nutty bitch,” he dared, but there was no gas behind it.

“It’s like you think I’m some kind of pervert or something,” she said, and before she could help it, she started to nag. “What did you think I was going to say? Jules makes rubber sex suits with built-in condoms? I saw him in street clothes in a high-etiquette dungeon fingering my boss’s twenty-one-year-old latex bottom?” She felt him up a little in her haste, accidentally, and he squeaked. “Who actually has something to lose here?” She asked. “Who’s the fucking dominatrix here?”

“You don’t like me,” Jules said, coolly. “I had no idea what you would say.”

He sounded terribly calm. The sidewalk was dappled in shadows of maple leaves and, boxed in by reasonable townhouses on both sides, she was inclined to stay calm as well, and in her calm, she found a strange truth.

“I like you just fine,” she said.

“Oh.”  

She liked him just fine. She liked him more than she liked Ava.

They walked.

“God, it’s fucking hot,” she said. It would be more comfortable not to have their arms around the other, but she didn’t unlatch.

“I moved to this neighborhood a couple weeks ago,” he said. “We’re not too far. I’ve got a window unit.”

A window unit meant he’d accumulated an actual window; a net gain from what she remembered of the dismal basement unit she’d ducked inside three times over their three year acquaintance, along with a damp cement strip notating the kitchen and two hoary pipes jutting six inches from the ceiling where tawny water dripped into provided buckets and Jules himself, barefoot, crisscross applesauce on a carpet square stringing the hundredth of ten-thousand waiting bugle beads with one or two local drag queens, staring open mouthed at a small, shit television propped up on a pile of clean laundry encased in a garbage bag, and onscreen a shoulder-padded daytime soap actress made lines like “there’s nothing to worry about Blake – do you really think I’d expose the Nazi treasure to outsiders?”

“Yeah, let’s,” she said.

He’d found a squat, orangey building with collapsed flower beds out front and only the faintest smell of weed in the halls. She noted, vain, that he opened the doors for her and motioned her up the stairs first and it wasn’t until she’d reached the top landing of the third floor, and he was sorting out keys that she felt the pluck of that old sexy situation, which was Going Inside a Boy’s Apartment, something she hadn’t done since college, and even at that time, something that usually happened under the close watch of protective friends. She couldn’t eye him either, to see which way his intentions were shifting – he was already eying her – but then he let her inside and the feeling was wiped out by absurd, maternal relief.

“Oh, thank God,” she blurted out. “This is so much better.”

The place still smelled like paint and floor wax, and she walked about at her leisure, touching the walls, and flapping her arms, knowing she wasn’t going to crash into a spiderweb or trod on mummified centipedes. The only furniture yet was a pulled-out futon (he was a bedmaker, who knew) and the walls had been built out to delineate a kitchen. She lifted the back of her shirt to the air conditioner.

“I thought you were an idiot for accepting that place, before,” she told him, regarding the old basement. “Or you’d picked it to antagonize people on purpose.”

“Give me a break! I was broke. I was nineteen.”

He shed one flip-flop on his way to the kitchen. She watched it prone on the floor while she calculated.

“No, no,” she reminded him. “When we first met, Ava said you were twenty. We were in a bar. She made you duck under the table when the bouncer made rounds. You were illegal.”

“Nuh-uh,” he said, unevenly thwap-thwapping back to her. He handed her a beer. “I was here a whole year before you showed up. I came before you.”

He sat on the edge of the futon, and she considered that perspective as he scratched the back of his shin with his bare foot. He had long, narrow feet, and when he was looking at things that weren’t people looking back at him, his eyes tended to glaze over. He was looking at the blank wall.

“Hold up,” she said. “How old are you now?”

“Old enough for you to sit next to me,” he replied.

It didn’t mean anything, coming from him. She left her beer on the windowsill and sat next to him. He’d have to get a nicer bed at some point, she thought, bouncing up and down a little, and wondered if, all along, his manners and his living situation pissed her off so much not because, as she initially believed, they were representations of his obnoxious personality, but because she had been frightened that he was going to get hurt and clearly no one else around was going to warn him otherwise.

“You must have left your parents pretty quick,” she said.

“That was my aunt and uncle, just now.”

“Were they more fun when you were growing up?”

“My grandma raised me,” he said. “For eight years. Then we swapped.”

She unfastened her sandal straps and tried to dream up a guess about him that could possibly be correct, but she had the feeling if she said raised in a house? He’d go no, in Mr. Toad’s canary-colored caravan, and the woodland squirrels taught me how to sew, and I lost my virginity to Morlocks. She wondered if she was the first girl he’d ever brought up here. She wondered if his aunt and uncle already knew he was gay. She wondered if he was gay. And in her wonderings, she missed, at first, his growing impatience beside her. He touched her hand; she accidentally flipped her right sandal underneath the futon.

“Crap,” she said.

He rolled his eyes and slid to the floor, slipped between her legs, and with one cheek pressed to her thigh he rooted one armed underneath the springs and came out with the sandal, which he deliberately tossed several feet away. He came up on his knees, face lifted to hers, and she had to spread her own knees to accommodate him. His stern little expression was very cute, and she was warm with pleasant condescension, something sorely missing from her and Ava’s ropework that afternoon. She was tired of art, she decided, ignoring Jules’ cold hands creeping up the back her shirt, and she was tired of fantasy and she was sick of endurance feats physical and mental, and she was tired of her own cowardly communication, so much so the tiny bubble of unearned pride she felt for Jules’s ability to maneuver himself into the positions he required ballooned, out of control, into an old familiar cocoon where she couldn’t hurt him and he couldn’t hurt her.

“Nobody knows,” he told her, perhaps feeling it too. “But I can be a good boy.”

Jiminy Christmas, indeed. But he couldn’t have her for cheap, and he clawed her spine too confidently. She put her palm to his left cheek, let her thumbnail scrape over a pale divot where it looked like the nap of a paint scraper had teased out a pill of his flesh, years ago.

“Listen,” she asked, and squeezed his ribs with her knees. “If you had met me while I was with relatives, and I looked scared about it, what would you have done?”

His fixed gaze skittered to the side, over the wall, across the floor, and while he didn’t retreat, he only spoke up when his face reached a zenith of clumsy guilt. “I would have fucked around with you first,” he admitted. “Only a little.”

“I thought so,” she said, and smacked him a nasty one across the face.

With no furniture around, the crack resonated. Jules took it open-eyed. He didn’t whine or argue and only clenched his jaw a couple seconds after, when the real pain hit. He faced her again, glowing and pink, his left eye watering. She couldn’t help it. She grabbed his head and squeezed and clawed and palpated, yanked his lamby hair, perfect for yanking, and beat his butt with her heels. His head thrashed and his hands flapped around behind her back. She seized one and forced it down on the blanket and let the other undo her halter knot while she bridled him with her free thumb. His back molars rose on the edges in sharp ridges, and she whirled her wrist under his chin until she could see him swallow from the inside. The whites of his eyes showed.

“Good boy my ass,” she said, to herself, but he heard and appeared wounded. “Okay, okay,” she conceded. She wiped her thumb on his face, forgave him silently, and even her playful meanness disintegrated. He crawled over her lap and rubbed his red-hot face in her shoulder, gnawed painlessly on her clavicle. His shorts stuck out in front.

She knew a hundred ways of positioning and a hundred more roleplay scenarios he’d probably accept without suspecting she used them not to her pleasure, but to protect her modesty. She was sick of it all, hadn’t fucked or been fucked properly since she’d been his age, and was horny enough to maim. She took him again by the shorthairs along the nape of his toasted neck, and when he sighed down her back, she pressed his hand to her groin.

“Feel,” she ordered.

He felt dopily, paused, and resumed. Squeezed. Offered no comment.

“Tell me what that is,” she said.

He had delicate ways when he had enough patience to reveal them. Without asking permission he slipped a hand down her waistband, far between her legs, far too quickly for her to chase him off, and by the time she felt him properly, he held her so the head nestled in the heel of his hand, wedged against the meat of his thumb. He felt her up against the underside vein of his silky wrist.

“That’s the cock that’s gonna fuck me,” he answered, correctly.

 -

She had condoms in her purse. He had Vaseline in a bric-a-brac moving tub besides the futon. He rolled onto his narrow tummy, and she flipped him onto his back again so fast he nearly rolled off the mattress. She wished, as she watched him raise a knee and finger himself, that she’d brought her toolkit with her from the club where she kept her nitrile gloves and her fancy salves and her more mobile toys. Jules laid himself out on the futon like somebody else would on a beach, languid and comfortable and she pressed one of his nipples with impatience. She suspected he’d be chatty, but he didn’t speak at all during the preliminaries. He had more body hair than she would have expected, but not enough to grab, and a severe bathing suit tan line that reminded her of Ava’s jabs about the minor gossip between him and Roscoe. She wondered if some queen paid him to lay out on a patio somewhere, if that kind of arrangement still happened, and she wondered if he could let go of the sniping and the attitude long enough to show that hypothetical crowd what he was showing her now – that he was, actually, a very good boy.

When he was ready for her, the very good boy reached out with his arms (and made gimme-gimme clutches with his hands). She obligingly sank on top of him, then, quicker than she intended, into him, guided by his hooked shin and a decisive hand on her ass. She clawed his scalp and arched, involuntarily driving herself forward. A telltale sensation like he’d dumped a bucket of his own blood over her head soaked her from head to toe, and for a hot second she thought it was too late – then he jerked one her nipples until she shrieked and came back to him, stunned. 

You’ve got more than that in you, she heard him say, through the haze in her brain, and in between two blinks he swapped out the sadist faunlet for, once again, being her very good boy, and he undid her bun with one hand and guided her head so he could kiss her mouth and calm her down. She saw from above his legs lock around the small of her back. She was shocked she could get hard enough to effectively penetrate, a shock that blissfully vaporized as she rocked inside him.

His own cock, which they mutually ignored, was restrained by her soft stomach. Her breasts ached, pressed against his chest, and she had to break free from his clasp to prop herself on her forearms. He followed her, licked her lips until she gave up and sank back down. The tip of his nose was cold against her cheek. She could feel his lashes and the curve of his eyeball roam around in the socket. He was a ferocious and intent kisser, not nearly so languid now, and every goosebump outside his skin and strand of muscle beneath rose to her, encased her in his prickles. His focus made her quite aware of a separation between her hips (melted, as far as she was concerned) and her brain, electric-bright now, entertaining Jules by turns as a barbed, poisonous plant, as a nuzzling, brainless creature, as a mean bottom slut who clawed her bottom and held her hair in a knot in his fist, who maybe needed to be exercised as a handler would a spirited pony, in order to nurture his kindness, improve his manners, and keep his juices fresh – and she giggled involuntarily, a tight muscle in her back relaxed, and she came inside a boy for the first time.

She either made an unacceptable noise, or a had been making noises all along. A downstairs neighbor ratta-tat-tatted their ceiling, Jules’s floor. Practical as a fillet knife, Jules pushed her out of his ass, swung one leg wide, slammed his heel rudely against the floorboards, uttered “fuck off, asshole” then rolled back to her again and rubbed his face between her breasts. She cuddled him a couple tender seconds, which he tolerated, before scuttling backward and regarding her from a lucid distance as she disposed the condom.

“Come back here, she said. He looked like a praying mantis.

First, he stuck his legs off the thin mattress and with one judicious sweep of his torso, seemed to crack every bone in his body. Then he crawled over and allowed himself to be held.

“Oh,” she noticed. “You didn’t come.” His dick was still hard, and when he laid his back flat against her hip, it bobbed due west of his belly button.

“Relax, it doesn’t always happen for me.”

She ignored him and let her ego propel her forward. He reclined on her like she was a chaise and breathed through his nose.

“You know what Ava calls you?” She asked, jerking him onward and upward, hopefully.

“I’m a community opportunist,” he answered smugly. “Plus, Roscoe’s houseboy.”

Two out of two, verbatim. She drew her nails up and down his stomach and he twitched, fought against curling up. “Houseboy,” he repeated, hissed. “The last houseboy passed away in the fucking nineties. They peeled him down with the wallpaper.” She felt, through his spine, how he tried and failed to work up a temper. “Then they tatted his chalk outline above some burlesque artist’s John Willie tramp stamp. Mistress Avalon sure is concerned with faggot business.”

“Your boys don’t make you come?” She asked, a hill over him now, and above arguing. He sparred solely with himself.

“What boys? These guys – big guys –”

She went back for more Vaseline, not great for this kind of thing, but she was getting the idea Jules had a sensible nursery spirit and rarely abused himself. He didn’t appear to know much about his body and froze like a striker frame when she rolled the tip of him in her palm for more than fifteen seconds.

“– They think your asshole is your only sex organ,” he continued. “They hate themselves for loving twinks. And then they give you the reach around and if you aren’t wet like pussy then oh-h-h-h my god, it’s like the fucking sky is falling –”

She sat up, and his feet paddled the blanket to stay in contact. He reached behind her and grabbed her hair again but didn’t pull. He turned his face into her neck, and he shook all over.

“Being a slut is really hard,” he said, woefully, failing to hide, for a millisecond, the ghost of what might have been a sweet kid. Or it was her imagination. Either way, she made him come all over himself. It didn’t seem to register to him until the drops hit his chest. He looked down at his sad, wet dick and then back up at her, so testily she laughed in his face. He was smudged pink all over from her lipstick, and she pinched his springy cheeks.

“I’m a cradle-robber,” she declared.

“Okay, Methuselah,” he said, unimpressed, and darted away into the dirty ivory bathroom before she could slap his ass.

He recovered rapidly. In the sunny room things took a slumber party turn. He fetched her abandoned beer, dug out makeup wipes he inexplicably possessed, and repaired the damage to her makeup. He berated her when she couldn’t stop giggling.

“I was kind of wondering…” he began.

He paused. Sex had made him tactful.

“Go on,” she allowed.

“I was wondering if I’d ever figure out why you bothered being a dominatrix.” He used the point of his little finger to clear wet black scuzz from the corner of her eye. She hardly felt it. “Ava’s got her thing about being top dog. Claire’s a sadist. And somebody needs to get around to neutering Archie before he starts spraying the furniture. You, a mystery.”

“You think about me!” She preened and wiggled.

“You go on.”

“I like,” she confided, “to strap muscle hunks to the pommel horse and tickle them until they scream.”

“Gee whiz.”

“I like straitjackets, but I don’t like rope,” she continued. “And I like floggers, but not single-tail whips. And I like human furniture, but not human ashtrays.”

“The Marquis de Lux over here.”

He’d reached around and started French-braiding her hair. She put her ear to his chest and found his mousey heart.

“My mom and dad were angels,” she continued. “And my sisters were angels and my aunts and uncles and my grandparents. They were angels from the start. So was I. I liked it. Doctors like it too. When a kid is angelic, and very, very, very, very good, and says the right things, and rolls over. They give you what you need.” She thought that over. “They decide to give you what you need,” she clarified. “I was rolling over constantly. I didn’t know how to stop. It freaked me out.”

Jules’s heart answered wug-wug-wug. He sat in her lap and tried to get her braid to stay fixed in a twist. “See, I’m the opposite,” he said. “I’m a huge cunt, but I’m always looking for an excuse to be nice.”

Her hair unwound down her back. He clamped her bobby pins between his teeth, to deliberately make the job harder, then, looking down in their laps, spit them on the floor. And as quickly as she decided she needed to find her clothes and depart, having revealed too much, she stayed the entire night.

 -

On the lifeguard pavilions, the green flags were lowered, and yellow flags were handed up.

“Archie,” said Jules, from the safety of the canoe, “Head on back to dry land. No! no,” he called when Archie took Lux’s elbow. “Cathy and I need to talk really quick.”

“It’s not safe,” Archie said.

“I’m Red Cross certified,” Jules said, arms outspread up the oars as far as they could go. “I’m a beautiful heroine, waiting to happen. Also, I’m in fucking charge.”

“Go away, Archie,” Lux agreed, and Archie slopped to the shore, his broad back damp red in the sun’s undergrowth. Dark clouds approached from the west.

“Actually, that’s my boss.” Jules pointed to the sand straight ahead, where a bronzed ingenue, her thigh muscles sticking out like bread loaves, appeared to be watching the duo intently.

“You’ll get in trouble,” Lux cautioned.

“She wants to ride me hard and put me away wet, I think I can get away with it. I feel like you must have,” he added, pointedly. “She’s nineteen.”

It was hard to glare when wet, and it was hard to talk with Jules high and dry. Lux was clammy and clingy, and she couldn’t understand why he sniped at her. Then he crouched down, chest to knees, under pretext of scraping the oars straight down his gunwales and snapped, with pure, guileless annoyance: “Why are you pissed off? I’m the one who should be mad.”

That was too much to bear. “Jules –”

“I showed you my hole and said call me.” He straightened, the little snot, sincerity evaporated. “And you didn’t call me. Now I feel cheap.”

“Jules,” she said, sticking to her own path. “They don’t know.”

“Of course, they don’t know!” He said, clueless, if technically correct. “I didn’t think you’d spread it around to that crowd.”

“Shut up, Jules,” she tried again, and when his mouth opened automatically, she really blew. “Shut the fuck up!”

He shut the fuck up.

“They don’t know. They don’t know.”

She refused to say anymore. She wasn’t in the mood to roll over. Funny, how fucking a guy in the ass could spackle over a few of the gaping holes in her dignity. Patiently, she watched Jules rock to-and-fro, his face oscillating between his premature certainty and the vanishing tail of what she was trying to explain. Then he exclaimed, “huh!” and raised his face to the heavens.

Whistles sounded north and south, and one of his canoe companions raced twenty yards past, churning the creaming waves to reach the point to disembark. Jules ignored it all.

“Oh.” He started, blank-faced. “There’s bossola.”

He waved to the girl on the beach, who was really putting her back into her whistle. “Jesus, baby,” he said just as abruptly to Lux, who had been forced to retreat a few feet to find higher ground. “Now I’m really starting to worry.”

It was either of their guesses, as to what situation he was talking about. Lux wasn’t sure herself, and doubted he knew. His confusion reminded her less of him now, more of him the morning after, when she’d woken up, found him sitting bolt upright, staring at the walls of his clean, sunny studio. He’d turned to her bleary face, and with no confidence whatsoever, asked, Is it really so much better? 

“You want to climb up?” He asked now. “I’ll tell boss you have a cramp.”

“No, I can make it by myself.” She strolled backwards, ass out of the water, and twisted the sarong in front.

“I told Roscoe I fucked a girl for the first time,” he called to her, his eyes cast demurely downward. “You should have seen the sweat roll down his back.”

“I’ll call you,” she promised.

“Yeah, you better,” he advised, and shielded his face against the bursting spray. “Before someone else does. Ladies love the canoe.”

One perky heave-ho, and he displaced bow and stern, fixed his little craft perpendicular to the beach, and cast off toward the pier.

On the beach, Archie and Claire scuttled in the sand, packing their bags, and shaking out their towels. Claire held Jules’s rogue, soaked hat. “I was going to swim back over, but she yanked me out,” she explained, and pointed out Jules’s bossola, who had, watching Lux emerge from the dirty waters, eyed her face, eyed her cleavage, and continued stalking down the shore. She had an ass that needed to be seen to be believed. Lux hoped Jules wouldn’t tease her too much. She might call him sooner, to demand that exclusively. Possibilities, vistas, scenarios, she thought of all these and wrapped her towel around her waist, and she faced the dreary city skyline and she dreamed, and the full force of her imagination asserted itself.

“I’ll give it to him when I see him next.” 

Domme Lux took property of the hat.

Ava, ever watchful, caressed their folded umbrella. “I thought you and Jules didn’t get along,” she said. Deliberately did not ask. Lux, in that moment, didn’t care. It wasn’t her job to teach Ava manners.

“I like him just fine,” she said.

[yourdeepestfathoms]

A Lullaby For A Stallion (Cowgirl AU)

It was just before dawn, Sunday morning, a week after the first race, and Joan Meutas was sneaking out of the house. She laughed at herself- if Bessie caught her like this, she’d be likely to think she’d been out all night and was sneaking back in. For once, she actually got a good night’s sleep because she wanted to be energized when she went out on the range by sunrise. Today was all hers, for herself, and she’d chosen to spend it in the fields with her horse.

Her horse.

She grinned as she stepped into the stable area and called in a singsong voice to her partner in crime, who replied with a snort and peeked out of his stall.

“Good morning, pretty boy,” Joan cooed, patting the stallion’s soft nose. “And good morning to you, too, Listener.”

Unlike her brother, the dapple grey filly didn’t react. Instead, she just stood with her head sticking out of her stall, blinking at Joan. Joan blinked back, then shrugged and returned her attention to her horse.

“I hope you’re ready to do some riding today.” Joan said, grabbing one of the halters from the hooks on the wall, “We are professional riders now! So we need to keep up on training!”

Blazer pawed at the ground. He whickered deep in his throat, a contented sound that also managed to sound somehow curious.

“Yes, we’re racers now.” Joan answered to the question she thought he was asking. She raised the halter into the air and held it there. The horse sniffed the air, then stepped forward slowly until he could stretch out his neck and just reach it. He snuffled at it, but since Joan had taken the precaution of rubbing it against her body so it would have a familiar smell on it, the horse just snorted and shook his head, sending his mane flying.

Joan raised a hand, but didn’t try to touch him. Blazer’s ears twitched, pricked to the front, a quick twist back towards the wall, then to the front again. He nuzzled Joan’s hand, shifting his head around so that Joan’s fingers were on what had turned out to be a favorite spot for a rub. Joan obliged, and Blazer dropped his eyelids and almost dozed for a moment.

Joan could barely breathe, but she forced the air in and out, in and out. Delight bubbled up from somewhere deep inside, but she kept it pushed down. She had to remain calm.

Left hand rubbing behind Blazer’s ear, she ran her right, still holding the rope, down the horse’s neck and along his back. She murmured soft, soothing words, nothing that would have made sense to anyone listening, but a language they both understood. She ran her hand back up to Blazer’s head, and prepared to slip the rope over his nose. Blazer threw his head up and stepped back, then forward, through the open gate with a huff.

In a heartbeat, without really thinking, Joan dropped the rope and grabbed hold of the thick mane. Blazer tensed, and Joan jumped. The horse leapt forward, and Joan went with him, sliding belly down over the withers, then she got one leg over and pulled herself upright. It was a darn-fool move, and Joan knew it, but the stallion was moving full out now, and there was no way to get down. Nor did she want to.

Blazer and Joan burst from the stables.

The gallop was smooth, with springy power from his hindquarters that Joan easily adjusted to, even bareback (god her thighs and tailbone were going to ache later, though). They were headed to the cow pasture, and Joan felt as well as heard the clarion call of a mighty stallion. The cows lifted their heads first and began to move, calves bleated their anger at the sudden interruption of their meal but trotted alongside, and the bull started circling, looking for whatever threat had gotten this stallion riled.

Taking hold of his mane, Joan guided Blazer to swerve towards the nearest heifer. The blonde bovine looked up at them curiously, lowed, then padded forward.

The stallion circled the group, running faster than Joan would have believed. She leaned forward, keeping her balance with ease, her legs an iron band around Blazer’s girth. She could feel the powerful muscles bunching and releasing, the heat and sweat leaching through her pants, searing her skin.

The cow herd was galloping, yet Blazer ran faster. He twisted to the right, to the left, his body never straight. Joan felt like she was riding a wild, plunging river, a torrent that tossed her, battered her, until she hardly knew where she was.

They were headed for an opening in the rocks that led to a canyon, but a calf missed the entrance and dashed to the left. Seeing this as a good chance to practice more of his maneuverability, Joan had Blazer take off after it, which nearly unseated her in the process, but she had her hands locked with fistfuls of mane and was able to pull herself back. When they reached the calf, Blazer slid to a stop on his haunches and Joan was banged against his neck, then nearly slid to the ground. Before she could situate herself, Blazer was in motion again, his jaws nipping at the calf’s heels and driving the youngster back towards the herd. The calf slipped, then got her feet under her and raced toward her mother, and Blazer turned again to the back of the herd. Joan hung on with the sure knowledge that if she fell onto the rocks at this speed, she’d never survive. Head whirling, nausea twisting her stomach, she grabbed hold of more mane.

Blazer pushed past the herd to take the lead, and plunged down the banks of a small stream. Water splashed in all directions, blessed coolness soaking them and seeming to take the fire from Blazer’s eyes. He slowed to a canter, then a jog. Exhausted, Joan lost what was left of her balance and fell off.

—————

She came out of darkness to the squeal of cattle and the discovery that she was wet. The sound of hooves thundered by and dust choked her as she tried to drag herself to her feet. She ached all over and she knew she’d feel worse tomorrow, but, oh, God, it had been worth it. She looked around and saw that she’d landed in the stream which, fortunately for her, wasn’t very deep. Cows were milling around, restlessly tossing their heads, snorting, stamping, stirring up dust to the point she couldn’t see more than a few feet. She whistled low and long and heard Blazer whinny in answer, but the horse didn’t come to him.

Then, she realized she could hear the creak of saddles and the swish of ropes in the air. She looked around wildly and found there were four horsemen surrounding the little herd, one of them, a big man on a buckskin, getting ready to cast a rope toward Blazer. Without thinking, she waded out of the stream and stomped over to him.

“Hey!” Joan called out. “That’s my horse!”

The man jerked, and his lariat fell short. Joan notices that it’s Thomas. Culpeper and two men Joan didn’t recognize were at his sides.

“He belongs to whoever catches him,” Thomas said, and started to build his loop again.

“You saw me race with him a week ago!! He’s mine!”

One of the other men laughed. “I don’t see no rope on him. Hey Thomas, this kid thinks she’s got a rope on that horse.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve been working with him for over a six months now, and he’s mine.”

Thomas kneed his horse- the majestic black hole that was SheBeast- around to face her. “You been workin’ this horse for two weeks, he should be in a corral by now with a saddle on him. I think you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, I just choose a better way of breaking a horse than you use.”

Thomas rode up to her, then stepped down off his horse. “You’re that snot-nosed, little runt who beat Culpeper, aren’t you?”

Joan stood her ground. “And if I am?”

Thomas walked slowly around her, and Joan turned to keep him in sight.

“Seems to me you forgot how things are done out here. Seems to me you don’t remember how a horse belongs to the man who catches him. Hear that? A mean. Little girls like you aren’t meant to ride.”

“I’ve been training him every day, down at Silver Bass Farm. That’s where he’s been living, he and his sister, and he belongs to me.”

Thomas took his time and gazed around the canyon. “Well, we ain’t on Silver Bass now, girl, and you don’t got a brand on him, so I say that makes him fair game. Since I’m the one with the rope, I’ll be the one takin’ him home.”

Joan stepped forward until there was no more than a foot between them and said through gritted teeth, “No. He’s mine.”

Suddenly she felt a loop drop over her head. She tried to raise her arms, but it tightened around her chest, and then she was yanked off her feet. Even with the wind knocked out of her, she knew she had to get the coil off. It loosened for just for a moment, and she grabbed it and got one arm out. A second yank on the rope spun her off-balance and she fell to one knee but managed to get it off the rest of the way.

A shadow fell over her and she looked up to see Thomas standing over her.

“Give it up, kid, while you’re ahead.”

“No,” She gasped.

Thomas grabbed her shirt and dragged her to her feet. “Give it up and go home!”

Joan just glared at him. “No.”

Thomas’ fist came out of nowhere, and Joan felt like a rock hit her on the side of the face. Dizzy, she would have fallen if not for Thomas’ grip on her. She swiped at her mouth, felt wetness on her hand.

“He’s mine,” She said, and sank a fist in the big man’s gut.

Thomas took her to the ground when he fell. Joan landed hard, but tried to roll away. Thomas still had a fist twined in her shirt, though, and the fabric tore as she broke away. She scrambled to her feet and saw Thomas getting up. She launched herself at him, landing a right and a left in his stomach, but then Thomas broke through her guard and shot one through to her belly that laid her flat on her back. Gasping for air, she saw Blazer rising on his hind legs, two ropes around his neck, held between two of Thomas’ riders.

Then she caught a swift glimpse of a boot, tried to jerk away, and her head exploded.

———————

Joan.

She felt a touch on her shoulder.

Joan, wake up, sweetheart.

The voice was soft, insistent. She felt a familiar palm rest on her forehead, then slip down to cup her sore cheek. Her breath came out a quiet moan.

“That’s it, honey. Time to come back to us.”

She didn’t want to wake up. She ached everywhere and her head was pounding, but it was too late now to slip back into the darkness. She raised a hand to press against her eyes, but Bessie- she knew her by her touch as much as by her voice- pressed it back down.

“Leave that alone for now. Can you look at me?”

The light was blinding until a shadow moved over her. She pried her eyes open to see Bessie’s face hovering over her, blotting the fluorescent lights from view.

“Is she gonna be okay?” She heard Maggie ask.

“Joan?”

She tried to swallow, but her throat was parched. Her eyes closed themselves against her will- she was so tired.

“Give me the cup, Maggie then go get some painkillers. I don’t think Joan is going to feeling too well for awhile.”

She felt cool glass at her lips, then water touched them. She opened her mouth, wincing against the soreness, but the water felt so good, cooling her throat, that she didn’t mind the ache.

“That’s it,” Bessie murmured. “Just a sip more.”

She opened her eyes again and this time saw his Maggie’s worried face next to Bessie’s.

“‘m okay,” She croaked.

“That’s as may be,” Said Bessie with a touch of asperity.

Joan looked at her, saw a faint thread of anger touch her expression before it went back to worry. She struggled to sit up, gasping at her stiff, painful muscles.

“What happened?” She asked, head spinning.

“You must’ve taken a tumble off that horse. Catherine said she found you unconscious in the fields and brought you back here, but she ran off on Whispers before she could really explain.“ Bessie’s touch was gentle as she helped Joan into a sitting position, even if her voice was starting to rise. “I warned you about working with a stallion, that they were dangerous, especially that one, and yet you went off on your own.”

She was working herself up into a fine fit, not that Joan really blamed her.

“And here you are, bucked off and knocked out and who knows what all else wrong with you!”

“No—” She swayed, grabbed onto Bessie’s arm. “Not Blazer’s fault.”

Bessie steadied her. “I know, a good horsewoman doesn’t blame the horse for acting true to his nature. But, darling, you should have waited until we had him into a corral before you tried to ride him.”

“Didn’t plan it- just happened,” She muttered. “Should’ve gotten him home somehow. Shouldn’t have left him on the range...” She groaned. “Oh, Bessie, what am I gonna do?”

“You’re going to sit right there or lie down and spend the next couple days in bed until I’m convinced you’re well.”

Joan looked up, aghast. “I can’t, Bessie- I gotta find him. Gotta find him and get him back.”

“Back?” Bessie thundered. “You’re not to go near that horse again. I won’t hear of it. He nearly killed you, kicking you in the ribs and the head, and you want to try again?”

Joan shook her head furiously. The world was beginning to fade out and she had trouble putting her thoughts together.

“You don’t understand,” She said, working herself up. “I gotta— gotta find him– gotta get him back—” Her stomach cramped and she balled up around it with a small cry.

“Just rest.” Bessie gathered her into her arms, calm again in the face of her young jockey’s distress. “We can talk it over later.”

Joan tried once more to tell Bessie what had really happened, but the pain in her heart and all of her body aches and bruises finally caught up to her, and she gave in to the darkness.

———————

Joan missed church that evening. That was fine with her, as her murderous mood was completely incompatible with any kind of spiritual communion. She figured God would understand, and she could say whatever prayers she wanted from her bed as well as in a pew. Bessie had taken Maria and Maggie only after Joan repeatedly told her that she’d be fine- nothing was broken after all. She assured Bessie that she intended to spend the rest of the day sleeping or, at the most, reading; that she wouldn’t try to get dressed and go to the house (her room was actually in the barn loft, separated from everyone else) until they were home again; and finally, that she had the animals to yell at her if she even tried to get out of bed. She really didn’t need the others to hang around waiting on her.

She had breathed a sigh of relief when they finally left. Maria and Maggie had pestered her unmercifully, Maggie in wide-eyed wonder at Maria’s description of Aragon showing up with her unconscious body, both of them wanting more details than her headache could stand. Bessie was concerned for her health, of course, but Joan could see the upcoming lecture in her eyes. She really was too tired to explain it all right now- she’d suffered beatings before and not been so debilitated, but the ride on Blazer had worn her out first.

She remembered the ride with mingled pleasure and pain. The stallion was magnificent. He was fast, powerful, smart, and it seemed he could run forever. He was quick on his feet, too, considering how big he was.

But these thoughts just led Joan back to a brooding depression. Bessie thought she ought to leave well enough alone- there were other horses she could have. She should just forget Blazer.

How could Bessie say that? What was her problem with Blazer? He was Joan’s partner! If it were her horse, Speakeasy, wouldn’t she want to get her back?

What can I do? Was the refrain that went around and around in Joan’s mind. She simply could not leave the stallion in Thomas’ hands.

She turned onto her side and bunched her pillow so it didn’t press against her sore jaw. And what was her horse suffering even now while she lay here? Bessie was experienced in the ways of the world, a wise woman who’d learned many lessons the hard way- they all knew this, all knew she was troubled and had hidden pain of her own, but did her best to repress it. She advised Joan, after she had woken up an hour earlier, to move on, to find another horse rather than go track Blazer down and be brutalized once again. It would be the best thing to do.

But Joan didn’t want the “best thing”.

She wanted her horse.

She wrenched the covers off and pushed herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Her muscles protested and her head swam, but she forced herself not to give in to her weakness. She had to get well, and do it fast. As wise as Bessie’s advice might be, it was wrong. She couldn’t leave the horse in Thomas’ hands. Even if she had to let Blazer go, it would be better than letting him be broken while she sat up here in her room nursing her bruises. She had a moment’s hesitation over her promises to Bessie. Hadn’t she just been thinking that she was willing to be guided by the woman’s wisdom? She knew, though, that this was the right thing to do.

Bessie would just have to get over it.

She was stiff and sore- oh, was she sore!- but she could get around. She could live with his aching muscles, but she dearly wished they’d loosen up.

Joan hauled herself up and staggered down the stairs of the barn loft. Quietly, as if she thought the animals would rat her out, she crept over to the horse area and peeked into Listener’s stall. The filly’s ears were flicking back and forth and she bounded towards the door when the girl appeared.

“Come on, girl,” Joan whispered, “We gotta go get your brother.”

Listener snorted and Joan opened the gate. She couldn’t bother with a saddle right now, it would waste precious time, so she leapt onto Listener’s back without one. Her thighs and groin cried in pain, the rigidity of the mare’s spine digging into her vagina like a saw, but she ignored it.

Listener took off down the road once off of the Silver Bass land. Her hooves clacked loudly on the asphalt as she sprinted down to King’s Hill Farm where Thomas lived. As they approached, Joan heard the furious squeal of a horse. She directed Listener to run right through the front gate and skidded to a halt at the rails of a training corral.

It wasn’t Blazer.

It was SheBeast.

Her head was snubbed to the top of a fence post by a heavy bridle, back weighed by a roping saddle with both girths fastened tight under her belly, one back leg tied up to the girths. As Joan watched, horrified, the horse lost her balance and fell, held only by the bridle. Her front hooves raked at the post and the rails, her eyes rolled white in their sockets, and bloody froth spattered from her mouth.

“That’ll teach you!” Cried Thomas, whip in hand. He headed for the horse, but Joan was off Listener, over the fence, and on him before he got two steps in. She didn’t even bother to try talking to him, just knocked him flat and started hitting. The jaw first, to try to knock him out. She got in two blows before Thomas rolled out from under her, but the man was dazed. He took a swing at Joan, but missed, and Joan drove in again with a hard left to the belly followed by another right to the jaw. This time when Thomas went down, he didn’t get up.

Joan turned her back on him and faced the men who stood on the other side of the corral. Nobody moved to help under her fierce glare. She wiped at the corner of her mouth where it had split open and said, “Get her out of here.”

“But miss,” Said someone she didn’t know, “that’s his horse. He’s got a right to break it how he sees fit.”

The rage built up inside. Joan desperately wanted to save the Beast, but she had to know where Blazer was first.

“Where’s my horse?” Joan snarled, whirling around to face Thomas, who was starting to get up.

“I didn’t take your fucking horse!” Thomas spat, “It ran off before we could get it restrained!”

Joan grit her teeth and stomped back to Listener. As she did so, she heard Thomas growl, “You’ll pay for this, little girl. I’m going to make you bleed.”

Tears stung Joan’s eyes as she rode Listener home. Her Blaze was out in the wild somewhere, alone and probably so scared. He could be anywhere.

As Silver Bass came into view, Joan had to suppress a groan when she saw Bessie, Maria, and Maggie, along with Aragon and her jockeys out in front of the house. She was only gone for half an hour- how did Bessie already manage to gather a search party for her?

“Joan Morgan Meutas!” Bessie roared as Joan rode up to the house.

She was in for it now.

“I told you to stay in bed! I told you to rest and not go near another horse! I told you to take it easy, and what do you do? You bareback the sister of the stallion who mauled you!”

Joan knew Bessie had no ill intent with her words, she just got like this when she was worried, but her grief was turning to anger by the second. She sniffled and took a shaky breath as she slid off of Listener’s back, nearly collapsing because of her wounds and the fresh pain in her thighs.

“I had to.” She whispered.

“You ‘had to’?” Bessie said.

“HE TOOK MY HORSE!”

The cry came out of nowhere. Even Joan was startled, but the shock went away when the words continued to pour out of her mouth.

“Thomas- I was- I was riding Blazer and laid down to take a nap and when I woke up Thomas was there and he said because I didn’t have a halter on Blazer, that he could take him. He hurt me! He knocked me out, not Blazer! A-and now-” Her bottom lip started to quiver as a small sob escaped her, “And now he’s gone. He’s out there somewhere a-and I don’t know where he is and I- I want him back.” Her voice broke on that final word and she collapsed to her knees, weeping.

Surprisingly, it was Aragon who went down to her side first, then Maria. Without thinking, Joan clung to Aragon, as Maria set a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“I want my Blaze back,” Joan sobbed into Aragon’s chest. She felt the woman rub her back slowly.

“We’ll find him, sweetheart.” Aragon assured her.

“That bastard,” Cleves spat. “Horse stealing. What a low for Thomas.”

“Not beyond him, though. Or Henry.” Anne added with just as much anger as the other jockey.

“I miss him.” Joan wept, gripping tightly to the back of Aragon’s shirt. “What if- what if he doesn’t come back?”

“Shh,” Aragon hushed her, smoothing out her hair, “Don’t think like that, darling. We’ll find him.”

“He means the world to me, Miss Aragon,” Joan whispered, trembling in the horse trainer’s arms. “He and Listener. They-” Her voice lowers, taking on deeper and darker undertones when she murmurs, “they saved me.”

Before that could be explored, however, a commotion broke out in the nearby cattle pasture. The cows were lowing wildly and, against the backdrop of the colorful nearly fully set sun, an equine shape could be seen leaping over the fence before continuing to charge around madly.

“Blazer!!” Joan shrieked, jumping to her feet. She took off without a second thought and found that the black-speckled stallion was, in fact, her Blaze.

The horse jerked his head around and his eyes were alight with pain and fear. When Joan got closer, he tried to rise up and kick at her, but the girl quickly stopped.

“Hey, big guy, remember me?” Joan whispered, holding her hands out where Blazer could see them, “We’ve been friends a long time. I’ve never hurt you, and I’m gonna fix you up in no time.”

Blazer just rolled his eyes at her and neighed wildly.

Joan moved closer to the horse’s haunches, bunched and sweaty. The flaming chestnut coat was muted to black with wet, even in the cool twilight November air. She could smell the tang, caught up in the dust that swirled around them.

Blazer was pacing back and forth, then began jerking his head at Joan, driving her backwards towards the house. His long back legs kept stamping- the hooves were deadly.

Joan didn’t believe that Blazer would deliberately try to hurt her, but she knew the horse wasn’t really aware of exactly who was around him.

Maybe...

She started to sing the same lullaby she’d soothed the horse with before. She kept her voice soft on the haunting melody:

Hush-a-bye

Don’t you cry

Go to sleepy, little baby

Blazer shifted restlessly, snorting and flaring his nostrils in agitation. The horses near the house made noises in response, but Joan ignored them.

When you wake

You shall have

All the pretty little horses...

Tears streamed down Joan’s face as she gently cupped Blazer’s big, warm cheeks. She looked up into his smoldering hazel eyes and he stared back at her.

Blacks and bays,

Dapples and greys,

All the pretty little horses...

Blazer dipped his head low and pressed it into Joan’s chest, letting his eyes droop shut. Joan is frozen for a moment before sobbing and hugging tightly to her horse, burying her face in his mane. Even when her knees gave out and she fell to the ground, Blazer craned his neck down further to stay in her familiar grasp.

“I thought I lost you,” Joan hiccuped, “Oh, Blazer...I missed you so much...”

Blazer huffs against her chest, almost like he was saying he missed her, too.

After eight hours, the girl and her Blaze were reunited.

———————

Bessie walked over to Joan, who was watching Blazer munch happily on oats and alfalfa, just standing with her for a moment.

“What did you mean when you said he and Listener saved you?”

Surprised, Joan looked over at Bessie.

“Oh,” She said shyly. “There was a rattlesnake in here. Nearly bit me, but then Blazer started neighing and Listener completely pummeled it.”

Bessie nodded and looked back at the stallion.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you.” She said, “And I’m sorry for how I treated him. I was just worried. He’s a crazy horse, but I trust you. You seem to know what you’re doing.”

Joan smiles slightly, but didn’t say anything.

Bessie hesitated, then reached over to wrap an arm around Joan. The girl rests her head on her shoulder.

“Thank you for letting me stay here.”

“It’s no problem, lovely.” Bessie told her. She kissed the top of Joan’s head and then pulled away. “Get some rest soon, okay? I left a heating pad and some painkillers up in your room for you.”

“Thank you, Bessie.”

Bessie smiled then walked out of the barn. However, that smile disappears once her back is turned to Joan.

Rattlesnakes didn’t live in England.