Solo [Windmount Stables] Hands and Hooves

[Lissa Maze]

Lissa Maze 5 Spring, 514 AV Lissa rolled over in her bed, tangled as usual in a twisted blanket. She thrashed in her sleep, she knew—roommates at the orphanage had often complained about it. They’d also helped her wake up, though… The teenager groaned and forced herself awake, looking out the small window. “It’s still dark,” she moaned to the empty room. The blanket fell to the ground as she stumbled out of bed and grabbed pants and a blouse. “And it’s cold.” She knew it was just the morning making it feel like that—summer was warm in Syliras—but Lissa’s schedule had changed dramatically with her return to a job at Windmount Stables. She loved it, but the hours were far from ideal. Still, she ran to the stable, almost but not quite late, and got started on her job for the day. With an undignified grunt, Lissa pushed the last shovel of manure into a cart and leaned her shovel against the wall. It wasn’t her first time being a groom, but it was her second day on the job this time around, and she was tired. Mucking out stalls was certainly part of her job, but it wasn’t the most pleasant part. Still, this needed to be done. Lissa sighed and wheeled the cart away, dumping it out back with relief. That was her last stall for now! She hauled a sack of the straw and shavings that made up the soft flooring of a horse’s stall back inside and peered inside. Just enough left for this last stall in the bag. She upturned the bag on the floor, raking it out to cover the ground, and smiled. The stall was done, and ready for its resident. The resident in question was, of course, a horse. Of course, a horse—the rhyming made her grin wider. This one wasn’t just any horse. It was a Windrunner. A beautiful dapple grey Windrunner, 15hh high. Windrunners were, she had always thought, so beautiful, but she’d never met one until this job. She supposed that a messenger might be in town delivering a message of some sort, leaving his beautiful, beautiful mare in the stables. Not just that, but in her section of the stable for this morning. Immediately Lissa’s mind departed from the present, imagining what it would be like to ride this kind of horse. The speed a Windrunner could go! Forget a trot—they would fly at a gallop… It took a gentle tap on the shoulder to interrupt Lissa’s daydreams. She jumped, surprise easily overruling sense, and made a face before even looking to see who was there. “Try not to jump like that around the horses,” the man admonished. ”Haven’t we taught you anything about horsemanship?”[/b} Lissa blushed, nodding. She supposed that she did know better. [b] “Well, either way, you’re not working with this fellow,” she was told, and felt an inevitable lump od disappointment. “You don’t look like you’ve been here that long. You shouldn’t be working with someone like this yet.” She noticed that he said “someone” about a horse. Not many people did that—thought of them as someones. Thinking about it, she wasn’t even sure she would have said that. “Are you listening?” Lissa bit her lip and nodded guiltily. Obviously, she hadn’t been—and yet, to her horror, the man seemed to take her word for it. ”Good. Here are the stalls with horses I want you to take care of this morning—as I said, don’t exercise them, someone else will, but they could use a grooming for later…” The distracted fellow hurried off in another direction, leaving Lissa there. She was nervous, no doubt about it…how hard was it to groom a horse? Even she knew how to do that.