[Note: This story takes place before the events mentioned in ‘Loose Ends,’ not that anyone is worried about the timeline anyways.]
It was easy enough to settle into a rhythm in the new house, though it was too quiet and too empty. Ahnen was always gone, doing odd jobs to return at the end of the day with food, and Nauraa found that she rarely even spoke to him now.
She had managed to make a comfortable amount of coin, and a modest reputation for her skill, selling dresses and beadwork in the city. Ahnen would have disapproved of her daily treks into town if he knew, which she assumes he does not from his silence. The move places them closer to the city itself, though secluded in the forest along the outskirts, and the trip is more along the main road now. The city is, she admits, full of unsavory-seeming people -- Ahnen had been right on that count, but on the other hand, there were too many people for her to be a target as long as she stuck around older, better-off-looking folk so she did not seem alone.
Occasionally, though, the unsavory nature of the city was unavoidable.
There is a man slumped up against the stone wall slurring that he has a horse for sale. Next to him is the spoken-of “horse and cart,” though this is perhaps an overly generous designation for a miserable beast and a decrepit pile of scrap wood on wheels -- the unhappy victims of the drunkard’s quest for enough coin to drink himself back into oblivion. The horse looks just as bad as the man himself, an oddly-proportioned thing that has the thick build of a workhorse crammed onto the stature of a large pony at best. It is certainly not large enough, or in healthy enough shape, to have hauled a full-sized cart by itself, thin from too much work but somehow also paunchy from bad-quality feed, with overgrown hooves and patches where hair and skin have been rubbed raw by an ill-fitting harness.
Despite its pathetic appearance, the pony makes a chortling sound as Nauraa steps closer. It could simply have run, since the man had not bothered to tie it, but presumably it feared a blow if it moved. The man slurs again and looks up at the girl with a smirk that makes her feel as if she should go change her clothes.
“I am buying your horse,” she says with what she hopes is an air of authority (it is not, but she has only to convince herself and a man with very little cognitive function). She has five gold pieces and a smattering of other coins left over from the sale of two dresses and a variety of mending work, and she dumps the entire drawstring pouch unceremoniously into the man’s lap. He mutters something with the same leering gaze and hauls himself to his feet by pulling on the horse’s reins. He smells like sweat and beer and probably old vomit and other things less mentionable, and Nauraa tries very hard not to look as disgusted as she is in case it would set him off. Mercifully, he is more eager to get back to drinking, and he stumbles off to the steps of the Pony to be someone else's problem now.
She is not exactly sure what to do with a horse, or where she is going to put it, or what to feed it, or in fact how to help it out of its current miserable state at all. But she has it now, and it watches her expectantly from under a matted forelock. The cart can go, and the harness doesn’t fit it anyway, so she sets about unbuckling the pieces that hold horse to wagon. Finally, the pony is free and the tack dumped unceremoniously in the empty wagon save for the longest piece of leather. The creature is bigger than she’d thought. Hopefully it will follow her without trying to pull away. Could it be bribed? The basket with food for the rabbit and the cat contains...surely a horse would not want milk or meat. Would it like cheese? Berries? Sweet rolls? Half a cabbage?
It does, in fact, take a liking to the berries, although the red and purple juice make its white muzzle look as though it had been chewing at raw meat. It seems stiff when she begins to walk away, but it does follow without the girl having to tug at the makeshift lead.
Ahnen would tell her off for this, but there is nowhere else to go but home now, such as it is.
It is slow going through the city with a full pack, a basket she is trying not to jostle, and a slow horse plodding willingly behind her -- and it would be an even longer trip all the way back. This had been a mistake. She hadn’t thought about what she was supposed to do now. She had told Ahnen she wanted to ride north and go home as soon as the pass was clear. How could she leave now? Who would take care of the animals if she left?
A man’s voice -- refreshingly not drunk -- interrupts her thoughts a way past the west gate.
“‘Ey! Girl with the horse!” A team of two with wagon trots up past her and stops. The driver jumps down, his team stamping in place and stretching. “That’s tha’ drunk asshole’s cob, ain’t she?”
“It is.”
“She is. She’s a mare. Anyhow, you’re good for that. I’d have grabbed ‘er myself if I had any coin left.”
The man -- he cannot be much older than she, really, so practically a boy -- is a sturdy fellow with wheat-colored hair that falls to his shoulders and a constellation of freckles across his nose.
“You probably could have just taken her.”
“‘E’d have swung, an’ I don’t fight.” (What sort of man didn’t fight?) “But I’m glad someone grabbed ‘er. She’ll need ‘er feet done.”
“Her what?”
“Her hooves. Look how long they are.” He looks her up and down curiously. “Haven’t you ever kept a horse before?”
“Never.”
“Well, ’s lucky you ran into a farrier’s son then, isn’t it? You goin’ home?”
“North a way, just past the edge of the woods, sort of.”
He looks mildly bemused by that. “Huh. Didn’t even know anyone lived there. Fair enough, you’re on the way…sort of. Want a ride? Hop up and I’ll get you home. You can tie ‘er on the back and we’ll go slow.”
The young man is an easygoing companion and a talkative one, though not in the way that keeps one from getting a word in between. Even so, in the span of the not-particularly-long journey Nauraa manages to learn that her acquaintance’s name is Orenn, his father’s name is also Orenn, his grandfather’s name was also Orenn, that he has six siblings who live at home and a seventh married sister (no wonder they had reused the same name, with so many children), that the whole family was from the horse-lands many generations ago, that his father trains and shoes horses, that he plays the fiddle and lute, and several other pieces of town gossip about the weddings, children, and petty squabbles of people she does not know.
“Didn’t realize you were so close. Our farms are up another couple miles thataways -- pa’s stables and my uncle’s cropland. Can’t see it from here, it’s out the other side of the woods.” He pauses, regarding the girl closely. “Say, y’know what? How about I take the mare home with me? Pa and I can fix up ‘er feet and get ‘er on some proper feed, and since you’re not too far you can come and see ‘er whenever you want. I can even swing over in the mornings if y’want a lift.”
Normally, Nauraa would assume such an offer had less than wholesome intentions, but something about the man’s demeanor makes it impossible to believe any ill of him, and people who are kind to creatures that they could just as easily not be kind to are (or so she tells herself) generally decent people. And it would be nice to have a friend here, even if only for a little while until they were able to leave.
“I’d like that. Just...don’t come all the way up to the house. I will meet you where the road comes out of the trees on the other side.” Ahnen would throw a fit if he saw a strange man pulling up to what was supposed to be a hidden safehouse, and she is not sure he would approve of Orenn anyhow. The wagon rolls to a stop at the edge of the trees, and the man jumps down with her basket, offering a hand for assistance (kind to his horses and well-mannered, not that she is keeping a list of his qualities). “Tomorrow it is supposed to rain, and the day after that I go into town. How about the day after that?”
“Perfect.” Orenn plops her basket back into her arms with a grin.
“Then I will see you then.” His enthusiasm for just about everything seems to be contagious, since she finds herself smiling back.
“Not ‘f I see you first!”
Nauraa waits until the cart has gone on down the road and she can no longer see the man waving (it is a wonder he does not run into anything, really, driving that way) before she turns toward the house, composing herself before she slips in the back door lest Ahnen interrogate her about where she had been or why she was late. Perhaps he did not need any friends or help, but she is not such a solitary creature. As it is, he does not seem to hear her come in, and the house seems even more lonely and quiet than usual after an afternoon of conversation. It had not bothered her before as much as it did now, she thinks.
Sleep comes easily that night for the first time in many weeks, and in the morning the only dream she can recall is a vision of endless green fields that she knows she has never seen.
