Trisk kept her eyes on her plate, suddenly uneasy. They had talked all night, but it was all surface. This felt close. Personal. “No kidding,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as an equestrian.”
“Mmmm.” Kal shifted, the straw under him sliding in a familiar hush. “My first horse stood only this high,” he said, a bemused smile on his face as he held a hand out. “I was four. She was a real horse, not a pony, and I named her Cinnamon, because that’s what color she was. I should have named her Ginger, because she had a snap that could come from nowhere.”
Trisk laughed. “You sure she wasn’t a pony?” Her smile faded. She liked this side of Kal, and she wondered if it had been there all the time, hidden under peer pressure. School politics sucked. She went quiet, remembering.
“There’s something amazing about a good horse,” Kal said, either oblivious to her mood or trying to shake her from it. “You both have the same need to run, and this massive, powerful animal is willing to take you to the horizon, jumping fences and logs as if you could fly.”
She looked up, surprised, and he poked at his Jell-O as if embarrassed. “One with the horse, my mother would say,” he muttered, eyes down. “Both my parents ride. They host a Hunt every year for the winter solstice.”
His eyes had gone distant in memory, and Trisk tucked her hair back and leaned forward. She’d heard there were a few families that still ran the Hunt, but it was harder every year with the population of humans growing larger. “A real Hunt?” she asked, and he finally looked up. “With hounds and a fox?”
He nodded, oddly silent. “Most times,” he finally said. “We hunted a wolf once. It got away after mauling a handful of hounds. Every year my parents invite different people, but there’s a core that doesn’t change. Extended family, almost.” He leaned back, glass in his hand. “They come from all over the world. If Christmas and a business meeting had a baby, that’s the Hunt. People stay the entire week. I remember one year when the moon was full and the skies clear.” He took a sip, gaze vacant. “Honestly, I could have ridden forever, hounds or not.”
Trisk was silent, watching the memory ease his shoulders and soften his face. He was almost a different person. In her entire school career, she had exchanged perhaps no more than a hundred words with him. Why was he so different now?
“Do you ride?” he asked suddenly, jerking her back to the present.
“Sure.” Head down, she wiggled a pineapple chunk free. “I got a horse for my fourteenth birthday,” she said. “She was an old mare no one wanted, but she was mine. Before that, it was whatever was available at the stables, and trust me, no one offered me the easy horse.”
She looked up, faltering at his wide-eyed expression. “I never had a favorite. I mean,” she said to try to cover up her bitterness. “I like horses, but to be totally one with one?” She shrugged. “It never happened,” she lied. It had happened. It had happened a lot, but with many horses, not one special one. They all needed her.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Kal said faintly.
“Until I got Ruth, I’d always take out the most cantankerous horse,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. The wind coming in the barn door was pleasant, and the wine had brightened her mood. “The one no one wanted to ride because it would try to brush you off on the trees or roll on you? Every stable has one.”
“Why?” Kal asked, and she sipped her wine, thinking it tasted better with the pineapple.
“I felt sorry for them,” she said, almost laughing. “Stuck in the barn while all the other horses got to go out with their little blond goddesses. I learned to read them pretty fast, but still, the stable’s supervisor thought I was nuts when I kept coming back either without my horse or with scrapes and bruises—or both.” Pineapple chunk in hand, she pointed at Kal with her pinkie. “But my dad. He told them to give me the horse I wanted. By the time I was twelve, I could ride every single horse in the stables.” She slumped, an elbow on a bare knee. “It didn’t make me any friends,” she whispered. Except for the horses, that is.
“That settles it,” Kal said, startling her. “You have got to come riding with me. Maybe for the Hunt. My parents would love to meet the woman who engineered the fuzzy tomato now feeding the third world.”
Trisk froze, the memory of their cold looks, their disdain at presentation filling her as Kal topped off her glass. “I’ve met your parents,” she finally said, and Kal’s breath caught.