Blind Fall

by Amanda Milo

  Meesahrah, for all that she’s a brat, really seems to like me. And despite her tendency to suck my clothing, fingers, hands, and my arms into her mouth, I like her too. She also chases the other Narwari away from me when I walk through the pasture. When Breslin witnessed it, he was stunned. He told me it’s what Narwari females do when they’ve got a new foal.

  After that, he didn’t protest when I started taking Meesahrah for walks in the round pen. It’s normally the place Breslin gives the Narwari a light warm up before he harnesses them. I’ve been using it to work myself up before I climb on.

  Breslin’s been adding a thicker layer of substrate to the round pen—‘padding,’ he calls it—just about every day. If I hurtle down, it really will be an easy landing. But the stuff is so soft and so fine that every one of my footsteps sinks into it, so each day’s been more and more of a workout for me just to walk.

  I’m two circles in with Meesahrah on one side and Kota on my other, me slogging between them, when I hear the tell-tale creak of wagon wheels. I holler, “No more sand!” I’m choking on laughter. “You’re being crazy!”

  “I want it to be a gentle drop,” Breslin insists.

  “I thought the objective was to try not to fall.”

  “Everybody falls,” he says matter of factly.

  I pick up my knees higher, trying to prance through it. I puff, “Gotta pay if you want to play?”

  There’s a pause as he works over the idiom, then I hear the wry humor in his voice. “Said true.”

  “Where are you getting all this sand?”

  “I dig it up here and there,” he says easily.

  Meesahrah noses my shoulder. She doesn’t seem to be breathing hard at all, which is unreal. Speaking of unreal—so is Breslin. “You’ve been digging wagonloads of dirt up yourself?”

  He sounds nonplussed. “Of course. Did you think I had piles of sand waiting for me?”

  I scritch Kota between the ears, absurdly pleased that she’s panting a little. Not as much as me, but at least I’m not the only one working here. “Well… yeah, we do at home.”

  “Where do the piles come from?”

  I laugh. “I suppose somebody digs them up!”

  Breslin makes a grunt that, without words, manages to say Well see? There you go.

  I’ve got so much sand in my shoes, they’re weighted down. At least the stuff isn’t coarse like the sand from Earth. This stuff is a silty powdered sugar. Every step is the gentlest poof right before I sink. “I feel bad that Meesahrah is going to have my bodyweight added to her walk. It feels like we’re dragging through this stuff.”

  Metal tines make a ringing sound as Breslin hauls out his rake to smooth his latest sand-load addition. “She drags through nothing. Her toes are split. They spread wide so she stays on top. Unlike you and I, she’s made to cross sand effortlessly.”

  “Ahhh, that’s why she’s not breathing as hard as me. You cheat,” I tell her.

  She warbles at me.

  “Feel ready?” Breslin asks.

  I feel like even Meesahrah’s waiting for my answer. She’s tacked up (which was a fun process: I panicked when I learned there was no pommel/horn. Breslin however retained his level-headed reasonableness: “But what is the purpose? If it's only attached to the saddle if—when—it slides, then so does your anchor point. That doesn’t seem a sound safety measure—mind you, I’m not discounting—I’m simply struggling to picture it.” My head tilted in consternation, I’d replied, “Great, now that makes two of us.”) and her nose rests on my shoulder, not even trying to eat my shirt in this moment. “I’m so—” not “—ready.”

  Breslin hums. “Smells like untruth.”

  Whoa, whoa. “You can smell lies?”

  Breslin laughs. “No, but if my sense of smell was so acute what would I detect?”

  I lift my chin. “That I’m determined.”

  The rake makes a dull thunk as he must return it to the wagon. “Hence the abundance of soft sand. Prepare to ride.”

  I’m so nervous, even Breslin touching me isn’t a sufficient enough distraction. He boosts me up, and when I swing my leg over Meesahrah’s back—one of his hands bracing my shoulder, and one of them steadying my hip—I swallow bile and work to steady my balance. “Why did I want to do this?” I whimper.

  “Shhh, easy. Do you want to stop?”

  At his shhh, calm blossoms through me, and although I’m mildly terrified of the height I’m hovering at above the (soft and sandy) hard, cold ground, I do want to do this. “Thank you, but no—please keep talking to me though.”

  “Whatever you need, Sanna. I’m right here.” Breslin’s got this easy way of speaking, it’s almost trance-inducing, and I’ve heard him use this on the Narwari when he’s working with them.

  It’s totally working on me too. “Just keep hypnotizing me with your voice, and we’re good,” I tell him. “Tell me I won’t die until I believe it.”

  His hand squeezes my thigh and his voice is firm and his words are final. “You will not die.”

  I manage to trust him on this and I relax. “Whew. Thanks.”

  He gives my thigh another squeeze, and with my nerves mostly settled, now his touch on me is starting to register and I really need it not to. I can’t afford to be distracted by my hormones.

  Meesahrah effectively steals my attention by shifting under me.

  “Ah!” I yelp—quietly, because I don’t want to terrify her and have her rear up and drop me and crush me under her—”

  “Sanna.”

  I take a shaky breath.

  “You’re doing so well. Look at you: you’re up on Meesahrah! We can stop now if you want, and this can be the end of it, or we can do this in little steps every day if you want to build up to more. But you’ve accomplished what you set out to do. Taste your success.”

  I smile in his direction. “You know that stuff all over the ground? It gets everywhere and I mean everywhere. So I don’t want to alarm you, but it means that ‘success’ tastes like sand.”

  Breslin booms with laughter, and thank goodness Meesahrah’s used to it, because she doesn’t so much as flinch.

  Warmth fills me. There’s this candy on Earth that pops as it dissolves in your mouth, and it feels like those little candies are being happy-licked along my back right now, exploding over my skin.

  Kota makes a whining huff from the ground, feeling anxious and probably a little left out.

  “It’s alright, sal—girl,” I tell her.

  “Give in.” Breslin pretends to demand. “Salk sounds better than that coarse gurrl.”

  My lip tips up. “You’re seriously going to judge my Earthen words?”

  He pats my leg before he slides his hold to my hip, anchoring his hand. “I don’t have to. You already prefer the superior alternative. You just want to fight the bit.”

  “Gotta stop,” I warn him weakly, no willpower around him. “Bickering is foreplay.”

  “Only with you. Otherwise I’d have married Meesahrah.”

  The area between my legs is very, very awake and this is really not the time, and really, really not the place. The spot on my body he’s holding is all I can think about. “Maybe you should have. You two are perfect for each other.”

  “You kritted lie. We’d be miserable and she’d kill me in my sleep.”

  “You think she’d wait til you’re sleeping?”

  “At least you’d have the courtesy to warn me to my face first.” He strokes his hand along the side of my butt lightly and even the backs of my ears tingle in reaction.

  Someone could grab my arm and push me ahead of them going down a flight of steep, curving stairs (one of my worst fears, seriously) and I wouldn’t be scared right now. Of course, if Breslin had ahold of my hip like this no one would dare push me anywhere. Or drag me. Really, Breslin’s like a magic cure for my worries. I wish I’d had him years ago. I’d never know what tumbling down the steps felt like, never have a well-meaning stranger say, “Oh, sorry, I was t
rying to help you so you wouldn’t fall!”

  Meesahrah moves sharply and I grasp for her neck and end up with Breslin’s hand. I cling to him like a buoy and clamp my legs tighter around Meesahrah. She continues to jerk under me, and I have a moment to wonder if she’s seizing in laughter until the repetition of her motion helps me assemble, without tactile cues, what her movements are—she’s biting at herself. She has an itchy spot. I’ve stood at her shoulder and felt her do this when she needs to scratch or when she gets a bug on her side.

  Breslin could help her out but he’s in the middle of making sure I don’t lose my balance and she’ll have it in a moment. For her, this is no big deal. This is normal.

  Relax.

  She’s otherwise standing completely still—a feat almost unheard of for her—and I’m okay. I’m doing all right. And I want to try for more. “Can we try walking a little?”

  Breslin’s arm relaxes and his hand falls away when I stop clutching him. “Cluck when you’re ready.”

  Inside, I’m laughing, thinking how odd the order sounds, but I know what he means. I cluck like we do when Meesahrah is supposed to walk the wagon forward.

  I correct my balance when my hips suddenly feel like they’re being tugged ahead of me—and it feels so different, the tempo of her footfalls feels so very different from up here than when I’m sitting behind her on a (virtually) unmoving wagon seat.

  She has an easy, smooth gait and when I’ve walked next to her on the ground, or driven the wagon, I’ve gotten a full sense of her measured steps. But to be up here on top of her back, feeling her muscles flex and dip and shift: it’s crazy different. My body bobs with her and even though she’s only walking in a steady line, every one of her steps is equal to like five of mine and I feel like I’m flying.

  Giddiness overwhelms me for a second and I try to rid the tension in my hands by patting Meesahrah’s neck. I don’t have the reins; Breslin does, and he controls Meesahrah as he walks beside us. Kota pants and from the unobstructed direction of the sound, I can tell she’s looking up at me, also keeping pace with us.

  “How do you like it?” Breslin asks, quietly enough not to startle me. He’s amazing at this.

  I’ve caught the timing of Meesahrah’s gait and my hips automatically rock in time with her motion. It’s so cool, I can’t even speak.

  “San San? You all right?”

  I clear my throat. “It’s incredible.”

  His hand squeezes my ankle and it feels incredible too.

  I straighten a little, fear no longer locking up my shoulders, neck, spine—all of me. “I’ve heard people try to describe horseback riding before. They use words like ‘freeing’—and I never really got it before. I never got how it could be all that different from riding in a car or walking yourself. But… it is. And it’s so much better.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  We walk like this for several minutes and I feel my confidence building with every step.

  “Ready to stop?” he asks.

  “What?” My hand moves from where I have it resting on Meesahrah’s shoulders and I reach out and wait for his fingers to lace with mine. “No, why?”

  “Just checking. You’ll have to tell me when you get tired.”

  “Shouldn’t we ask Meesahrah?”

  His thumb taps my skin. “Pah. She pulls wagons that could hold thousands of you in weight, and she can do that all day. You think walking with you is going to tire her out anytime soon? Boredom will get her first, and she’s not bored. She’s being very… I half believe that you snatched her personality and switched it out on me. Don’t try to deny: I’ll have too much a struggle to believe you.”

  Shoulders shaking as I try to contain my snickering—I have a slightly irrational fear that I’ll scare Meesahrah up here and she’ll dump me and I could die—I do deny this ridiculousness. “Oh please. Just who would I have used to switch her personality? All your animals get sassy with you.”

  He flicks my leg. “Maybe you switched out hers with your own. When we first met, you were so sweet. Now look at you.”

  I snigger.

  We keep going, and I’m rather amazed at Meesahrah’s patience too: she’s probably walked around this ring a billion times—and she’s already walked this ring loads of times with me before today. It must be very boring, but she’s not so much as bouncing in place. And I’m ready for more. “I want to try the reins now.”

  “You have them,” he says, laying them over my hands.

  I hear a metallic snap and I know he’s attaching lines to Meesahrah’s bridle so that he can help control her motion and speed from the ground as I learn up top. We discussed this process at length, deciding the best way to approach this. We weren’t sure how it would go.

  It’s going awesome.

  The commands for riding are different than driving, and there’s a lot of leg control that I didn’t have the capacity to imagine. Breslin’s teaching me to use my legs to communicate with Meesahrah even more than my hands feed commands through the reins.

  I have a blast, and my heart feels like it’s going to burst with happiness when we stop for the day and Breslin calmly talks me through tightening my far knee to help my leg make it over Meesahrah’s back as he steadies me before helping me the rest of the way down.

  “I did it,” I crow through silly tears.

  “You did. And you did well,” he confirms, and his words are like hugs on my heart.

  I throw my arms around his neck.

  When he clutches me and turns our embrace into a slightly x-rated hug, I happily funnel my exhilaration into this impromptu sex attack. With no trees available, Breslin asks, “Can you hold yourself up by holding onto my neck?”

  “Oooh, you’re going to hold me up and we do this all freestyle?” I reply breathlessly, and fold my arms behind his nape, locking my hands over my elbows.

  He takes up my feet in his hands, which brings my knees up from his hips to his ribs.

  “Huh,” he says. “Small problem.”

  “Yeah. We’re, ah, not going to line up,” I murmur. I warn him, “Don’t let me fall,” before I let go of my elbows and clasp my hands at his nape instead.

  “Therrrre,” he growls. “We can make this work.

  Yes we can.

  Taking advantage of our preoccupation, Meesahrah sucks up half of the back of my shirt in her mouth, and Kota loudly shares her feelings on this whole business.

  When Breslin and I finish, me hugged tightly to him, I assure Kota she’s fine and Breslin fists the fabric at my back to free it from his beast’s teeth. That done, I smooth my skirt, and hunker down to Kota’s level to love on her and fit her harness on. It’s a confirmation that we’re partnering up again and it’s time for her to go back to work. For a guide dog, it’s hard for them to want to shut off. They love their jobs. Kota’s being a real champ about watching me work with Meesahrah.

  She’s a champ about sharing me with Breslin too. For a long time it’s been just me and her, but she’s adjusted and sees him as part of our family now.

  “Do you hunger yet, human?” Breslin asks, and I hear the rough strike of his hand patting Meesahrah’s side—it’s a hollow pong-pong beat over her ribs and an affectionate move she adores even if it sounds alarming.

  I bounce up. “Starving!”

  Kota barks and I hook a thumb at her. “She says she is too.”

  This becomes our pattern every day after chores if Breslin doesn’t have appointments. Meesahrah loves the extra attention, and we learn that she’s a natural at this. I’d heard that there are all kinds of horses; ones who will listen to your cues to the letter, ones who will walk right into a wall for you if you ask them to. Because they trust you. They want to please you and obey.

  And then there are horses that take your cues under advisement. If you guided them into a wall, they’d turn or stop.

  Obviously, for someone like me, an animal that is sensitive to my commands yet makes executive decisions when the
need arises is perfection. Meesahrah may not be a horse, but she’s exactly what I need.

  Breslin had me test this, very carefully letting me get too close to the sides of the ring, waiting to see how Meesahrah would react. She turns herself, not bumping into things, ultimately deciding if my command is safe to follow.

  Breslin says it: “This works out grand, Sanna.”

  It sure does. But unfortunately, nothing can be one hundred percent easy, one hundred percent safe all the time—and so it happens. Eventually, I fall.

  Sand kicks up at me as Breslin races to my side. I’m lifted to my feet so fast I lose my breath. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” I answer shakily.

  His hands are gripping onto me so tightly, and I realize he’s scared. “Then why do I see tears?”

  A watery chuckle trickles out of me. “Because falling is scary.”

  A great big sigh gusts over me right before Breslin hugs me to his chest. He’s so much stronger than me, I squish against him and stick there as he grates out, “It’s too late to be scared of falling. It’s done. Break yourself to it.” He presses his lips hard into the side of my face. “I’m glad you’re not injured.”

  I burrow into his chest, taking refuge until my heart stops racing. It wasn’t even a very big drop, not really, but man is it a scary sensation. Although, with Breslin, it doesn’t feel as terrifying as I expected it to. “I’m right with you,” I say into his shirt, sounding very muffled, “I’m glad I didn’t die.”

  Breslin squeezes me tighter. “I don’t know how my parents managed to watch that happen to me more than once—Sanna, I think my kritted heart stopped.”

  I pat his chest. “I’m okay and don’t be sorry. Everybody falls, right?”

  He’s draws away slowly. He’s quiet so long I don’t expect him to answer so I’m rocked at how softly he answers, “Yes. It seems we do.”