Horse Eden : Varina x Avenoir

Elara | Rider’s Quarters / Main Barn | Sawyer, Felix

Elara woke before her alarm.

Not peacefully, either. Not in the graceful, cinematic way people woke in beautiful old buildings with soft morning light and a sense of purpose. She woke with her eyes already open, staring at the ceiling of her small staff apartment with the heavy, irritated awareness that she had slept badly and knew exactly why. The radiator had been making that sharp little knocking sound again through the night, and the curtains had failed to keep the yard lights from pressing pale lines across the room, but neither of those things had been interesting enough to keep her awake. Unfortunately, Sawyer Tenneck had been. Or, more accurately, the memory of Sawyer Tenneck sitting feverish and half-conscious in a room that was not his, wrapped in borrowed warmth and trying far too hard to make needing help look like something temporary and forgettable. Elara had spent a large portion of the night deciding she was not thinking about him, which naturally meant she had thought about almost nothing else.

It was annoying. Deeply annoying. She had done the sensible thing the night before. She had found him, called Felix, made sure he was not left to continue decomposing in the lounge beside a cup of cold tea, and stayed only as long as seemed appropriate before letting the adults with actual authority and medical supplies take over. That should have been the end of it. A professional concern, handled professionally. Nothing more. She was not responsible for whether he slept, whether his fever broke properly, whether he drank enough water, or whether he woke up and immediately attempted to return to work through what could only be described as emotional damage disguised as work ethic.

And yet.

There was a certain type of person who made being cared for feel like an argument. Elara knew it even if she did not yet know Sawyer well enough to claim anything with certainty. She had seen enough, though. The way he had gone still when help became too visible. The way the softer parts of him had vanished the second other people stepped into the room, as though vulnerability was something shameful to be caught doing. The way his face had closed, not rudely, not dramatically, but with that quiet, automatic control that made Elara want to reach over and undo it just to see what would happen. She hated that most. Not the concern itself, because concern could be excused. Anyone with a basic sense of decency would have been concerned. It was the curiosity beneath it. The awful little pull of wanting to understand why he did that, why he seemed so determined to appear fine long after fine had stopped being believable.

She rolled onto her side and stared at her phone.

There were no messages, of course. She had not expected any. She had almost sent one at two in the morning, which was embarrassing enough on its own and therefore would not be repeated, even internally. Are you alive? Drink water or I’ll tell Felix you’re being difficult. Something light. Something easy. Something that could hide behind sarcasm and still mean what it meant. In the end, she had not sent anything. He needed sleep, and she needed to stop behaving as though a feverish American rider with a talent for emotional inconvenience was somehow her problem.

At five-thirty, she gave up pretending she might fall back asleep.

The room was cold enough that she made a face the moment she left the bed. Outside, the sky was still dark, the early morning pressed low and grey over the yard beyond the window. Falkenried was only beginning to wake, its old stone buildings softened by frost and thin yard lights, the roofs damp from the night. Elara dressed without much care for ceremony, pulling on thick leggings, a fitted sweater, and a long dark coat before tying her hair back loosely enough that it looked careless in a way she could still pretend was intentional. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror looked slightly pale, slightly tired, and extremely unimpressed with the day already.

“Reiß dich zusammen,” she muttered to herself.

Pull yourself together.

The advice was excellent. It did not appear to help.

She made coffee in the tiny kitchenette mostly because caffeine was the closest thing to a personality she trusted herself to have that early in the morning. One cup for herself. Then she stood there, staring at the machine for a few seconds longer than necessary, before making a second one. She told herself it was practical. She told herself that if Sawyer was awake and being stupid, caffeine might make him more tolerable. She told herself that if he was asleep, she could simply take both coffees to the office and no one would ever need to know she had made two. She told herself several things, actually, all of them very reasonable and none of them particularly convincing.

By the time she stepped outside, both cups were in her hands.

The cold hit immediately, sharp and damp against her face. The yard smelled of wet stone, hay, and horses, that unmistakable early-morning mixture that always made barns feel more honest before the day became crowded with money and schedules and people trying to sound important. Stable lights were coming on one by one. Somewhere near the lower barn, a groom was dragging a muck cart with the weary rhythm of someone who had done the same route a thousand times. Horses shifted behind doors, a few calling lowly for breakfast, their breath blooming white in the air when they leaned out into the aisle. No clients yet. No owners. No polished conversations about bloodlines or performance records. Just the work beneath everything.

Elara had always liked this hour once she survived the waking up part. It stripped the place down. Falkenried was impressive, yes, but not because it was beautiful in the way some yards tried to be beautiful. It did not beg to be admired. It simply functioned. People moved where they were needed. Horses were fed, checked, rugged, walked. The operation breathed itself awake, steady and efficient, and for a brief moment Elara understood her father’s point in sending her here with enough clarity that it irritated her.

She took the longer route to the office.

It happened to pass the rider’s quarters.

This was a coincidence only in the loosest and most insulting sense of the word.

The hallway inside the quarters held the stale warmth of a building that had been shut up overnight. Most doors were still closed. A pipe clicked somewhere in the wall, and the air smelled faintly of soap and damp towels, suggesting someone had already showered despite the hour. Elara had only taken a few steps in when she heard movement ahead of her: slow, careful footsteps, not unsteady enough to be dramatic but measured enough to catch her attention. She stopped near the corner, coffee warming both hands, and then Sawyer stepped into view.

He was already dressed.

Of course he was.

For a second, Elara simply stared at him with the kind of blank disbelief that came before real irritation had fully gathered itself. His hair was damp from a shower, curling darker at the ends where water still clung to it. He was in yesterday’s riding clothes, or close enough to them that it made no meaningful difference, jacket half-zipped, posture held together with a level of determination that might have been admirable if it had not been so plainly ridiculous. He looked better than he had the night before, which was an exceptionally low standard. Less flushed, perhaps. More upright. But still pale beneath the lingering heat in his face, still tired enough around the eyes that Elara felt concern rise too quickly and immediately covered it with offense.

Her mouth opened before she had considered language or tact.

“Was zur Hölle machst du da?”

The German came out sharp and automatic, slicing through the quiet corridor.

Then she blinked once, realised who she was speaking to, and exhaled through her nose with visible irritation at herself before switching.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Not her most elegant opening, but then again, elegance felt somewhat wasted on a man who had apparently woken up from a fever and decided the natural next step was to dress for work as though his body had not spent the night staging a minor rebellion. Elara walked closer, her eyes moving over him once in a slow, assessing sweep she made no effort to hide. Damp hair. Tired face. Riding clothes. The set of his shoulders. The entire scene was so predictable she almost wanted to laugh.

Instead, she held out one of the coffees.

“Here.”

She gave no explanation at first, mostly because explanations were dangerous territory and she had no interest in wandering into one before breakfast. The cup was warm between her fingers, and she did not release it until he took it. Only then did she lift her own coffee and take a sip, buying herself a second to arrange her face into something suitably unimpressed.

“I made too much,” she said.

A lie, obviously. A bad one, too. Elara did not care.

The hallway remained quiet around them, the kind of quiet that made every small sound feel larger than it was: the faint tick of the radiator, the distant scrape of something being moved outside, the rustle of her coat sleeve as she shifted the cup in her hand. She studied him again, less openly this time, trying to keep the concern from becoming too visible. Better than last night, yes. But not well. Not well enough to ride, certainly. Not well enough to be trusted with a full morning of horses that each came with legs, opinions, and a spectacular lack of interest in human illness.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

It came out too genuine.

Annoying.

She corrected it immediately with a pointed lift of her brows. “And before you say fine, please know I am not in the mood to believe you.”

That helped. A little.

There was a pause in which Elara took another sip of coffee and looked toward the far end of the hallway, where the door opened back out toward the yard. She could already imagine the rest of the morning if no one intervened. Sawyer would go to the barn. He would appear on the schedule as if nothing had happened. Ruby would need hacking, Princeton would need work, Tallulah would exist as a deeply athletic threat to public safety, and he would climb into the saddle because that was what the sheet said and because some people treated printed obligations as if they were morally binding. Then everyone else would pretend not to notice how tired he looked until something went wrong, because horse people, as a collective, had a remarkable talent for ignoring human suffering as long as the horses were plaited correctly and the lorry left on time.

No.

Absolutely not.

Elara shifted her weight slightly, then spoke before the moment could become too soft. “I changed your schedule.”

There. Simple. Direct. No room for a dramatic hallway debate unless he chose to create one.

Her tone stayed light, almost casual, but her gaze remained steady. “You’re still on it, before you start looking offended. You’re just not riding today.”

She let the words settle.

“No Ruby. No Princeton. Definitely no Tallulah, which honestly feels like an act of public service.” Her mouth twitched faintly, though the rest of her expression remained firm. “You’re helping around the yard. Show prep, tack checks, walking horses if needed, whatever Felix decides needs doing that doesn’t involve you getting on something capable of launching you into another medical situation.”

It was perhaps more words than strictly necessary. Elara knew that. She could have simply said no riding and left it there. But she wanted to be clear that he was not being removed. Not dismissed. Not treated as useless. The distinction mattered, though she refused to examine too closely why she knew that. He would still have tasks. He would still be visible. He would still be part of the day, just not in the saddle, where a dizzy moment or a returning fever could turn dangerous faster than pride could object.

She looked down briefly at her coffee, then back up.

“It’s not a punishment,” she added, quieter than before. “You were ill. You still look ill. And Falkenried has enough going on without scraping you off the arena floor twice in twenty-four hours.”

That was enough softness.

Probably too much.

She cleared her throat slightly and recovered with a mild arch of one brow. “So. Drink the coffee. Do yard chores. Try not to turn basic recovery into a moral crisis.”

The words landed lightly, but she did not smile too much. She did not want it to become a joke entirely. Some things were easier to say through sarcasm, but that did not mean they were not meant.

“And if anyone asks,” she said, already taking half a step back toward the door, “Felix changed the schedule.”

Which was not exactly true, but it was true enough by Falkenried standards. Felix had approved it, or at least he would once she told him in the correct tone and presented it as an operational adjustment rather than an act of concern. The schedule would hold because it made sense. Ruby did not need Sawyer specifically that morning. Princeton could be lunged. Tallulah could survive a day of groundwork. There were trunks to organize, tack to check, travel supplies to sort, horses to walk, notes to enter. Plenty of ways to be useful without risking disaster.

Elara looked at him once more.

It would have been easier if he had looked completely fine. Then she could have felt foolish, rolled her eyes at herself, and gone back to the office with two coffees and a much cleaner conscience. But he did not look completely fine. He looked like someone who had improved just enough to become a problem again. Like someone who could stand, move, work, insist, and therefore be believed by anyone who did not look closely enough.

Elara looked closely.

That was becoming a problem of its own.

She drew in a breath, then nodded once toward the yard. “I’m going to the office before Felix decides I’ve died too. The updated sheet will be on the board.”

She stopped herself from saying anything else.

No drink water. No text me if you feel worse. No I barely slept because I kept thinking about whether your fever had broken. No softness that could be mistaken for something more dangerous than concern. Just coffee, schedule, instructions. Manageable things. Practical things. Things that could be explained if anyone happened to ask.

She turned and left before the hallway could hold her there any longer.

The cold outside felt sharper after the warmth of the rider’s quarters, and Elara welcomed it more than she expected. It cleared her head enough that by the time she crossed the yard toward the main office, she had arranged the whole interaction into something sensible. This was operations. That was all. A rider had been ill. His workload needed adapting. The horses still needed managing. The show preparation still had to happen. She had noticed a risk and adjusted accordingly. Very professional. Very mature. Nothing embarrassing about making coffee for someone before quietly removing their riding blocks.

Nothing at all.

Felix was already in the office when she arrived, which did not surprise her in the slightest. He sat at the desk with his reading glasses low on his nose, reviewing transport documents with the bleak focus of a man who had decided fun was something that happened to other people. He looked up as Elara entered, his gaze moving briefly to her coffee, then to the clock.

“You are early,” he said.

“Don’t sound so alarmed.”

“I am always alarmed when you appear before being summoned.”

“How touching.”

She set her coffee down, shrugged out of her coat, and moved directly toward the computer before he could ask anything else. The revised schedule file was still open from the night before, and she pulled up Sawyer’s riding blocks with the efficient calm of someone who had already made the decision and was now simply giving the system time to catch up.

Felix watched her for a moment. “What are you changing?”

“Sawyer’s schedule.”

A pause.

Elara clicked into Ruby’s slot. “He’s not riding today.”

Felix said nothing immediately, which was Felix’s way of forcing other people to continue speaking until they either justified themselves properly or made fools of themselves. Elara had known him long enough not to fall into the trap completely, but she did continue because this time she had a point.

“Ruby can be hacked by Markus. She doesn’t need anything complicated this morning. Princeton can be lunged and checked from the ground. Tallulah can do groundwork only, and frankly, everyone involved may be safer for it.” She dragged the blocks into new positions as she spoke, creating space, shifting names, changing Sawyer’s assignment to yard support and show preparation. “He can help with packing, tack checks, walking horses, notes, whatever needs doing. He stays useful. He does not get on anything.”

Felix rose and came to stand behind her, looking over the revised layout.

“He agreed to this?”

Elara did not look away from the screen. “I informed him.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It is at Falkenried if the schedule is printed quickly enough.”

Felix gave a low sound that might have been amusement if he were a warmer man.

She clicked save. “It makes sense.”

“It does.”

That was all he said for a moment.

Elara glanced up at him suspiciously. “That sounded dangerously close to approval.”

“It was an observation.”

“Of my brilliance?”

“Of your schedule.”

“Same thing.”

Felix leaned forward just enough to adjust one of the timing blocks by fifteen minutes, then moved another rider into the freed arena space with a precision that made it clear he had accepted the change. “No riding today,” he said. “Yard chores and show preparation only.”

“Exactly.”

“If he worsens, he goes back to the quarters.”

Elara’s expression flattened slightly. “Obviously.”

Felix looked at her.

She looked back.

There was a brief silence in which he seemed to consider saying something else, then apparently decided, wisely, that he valued the remainder of his morning.

“Print it,” he said.

Elara did.

The printer hummed in the corner, spitting out the revised schedule with an innocence it did not deserve. Elara collected the page while it was still warm, scanned it once, and felt a small, private satisfaction at the neatness of it. No drama. No announcement. No argument. Just a clean adjustment made before the day fully began.

Sawyer Tenneck — yard support / show prep / groundwork assistance. No ridden blocks.

Professional.

Unemotional.

Perfectly defensible.

She took the sheet down to the main barn herself.

The aisles were busier now, the early quiet replaced by the proper rhythm of morning. Horses hung over doors, ears pricked for breakfast. Grooms moved around one another without needing much conversation. Somewhere near the wash bay, a radio played softly beneath the scrape of tools and the thud of hooves against rubber matting. Elara slipped through easily, returning greetings in German and ignoring the way one of the younger working students glanced at the fresh schedule in her hand with open curiosity.

The notice board hung near the tack room, already crowded with turnout notes, feed changes, farrier times, and the original riding list. Elara unclipped the old version and replaced it with the new one, smoothing the top corners beneath the metal clips. For a moment, she stood there reading it as though she had not been the one to create it.

Ruby reassigned. Princeton adjusted. Tallulah groundwork only. Sawyer grounded, but not absent.

That mattered.

She hated that it mattered, but it did.

Keeping him entirely out of the yard would have made the morning cleaner, perhaps. Easier. But she suspected clean was not always kind. There was a difference between rest and removal, between protecting someone and making them feel useless. She could not claim to understand Sawyer fully, and she had no intention of pretending she did, but she had seen enough the night before to know he did not wear helplessness comfortably. Yard chores were not glamorous. They were not impressive. They were also not nothing. They gave him a place to put his hands, a reason to remain part of the day without letting pride carry him into a saddle before his body had caught up.

Elara stepped back from the board.

There.

Done.

Simple.

A practical adjustment made by an intern learning operations.

She almost believed it.

The rest of the morning began to move around the new sheet with very little fuss, which pleased her more than it should have. Markus glanced at Ruby’s reassignment, nodded once, and went to collect his helmet. One of the grooms made a note beside Princeton’s lunge time. Tallulah’s name remained exactly where it was, but the word ridden had been removed, replaced by groundwork in Felix’s sharp block letters after he passed the board later and added his initials beside the change. That helped. Official approval, stamped in ink. No one questioned it after that.

Elara took her place between the office and the yard, tablet in hand, entering updates as they came. For once, the work felt less like punishment and more like a system she could understand. A horse’s day shifted, and three other pieces moved around it. A rider was unavailable for one task but useful for another. Weather threatened the weekend, so packing lists changed and transport times became more cautious. Nothing existed alone. Every adjustment touched something else.

She thought of the night before again, briefly. Sawyer at the table. Sawyer in the chair. Sawyer looking worse under fluorescent light than anyone had a right to look while still insisting, through every visible line of himself, that he could manage. She thought of the way she had snapped in German that morning, worry outrunning etiquette, and felt heat rise faintly beneath her skin.

She took another sip of coffee and forced her attention back to the tablet.

By the time the yard was fully awake, the revised schedule had already become fact. That was the nice thing about paper at Falkenried. Once something was printed, clipped, and initialed, it gained a certain authority. People might question decisions in private, might complain later over coffee, might grumble as they adjusted tack or swapped horses, but the board itself was treated almost like scripture. Elara found this deeply useful.

She moved through the barn with the calm expression of someone who had not quietly rearranged an entire rider’s morning because she had been concerned. Near the end of the aisle, she caught sight of Sawyer only briefly. He was not mounted. That was the important part. He was in the yard, but on the ground, near the tack trunks, where one of the grooms had clearly pulled him into show preparation. From a distance, he still looked tired. Upright, but tired. There was enough color in his face to suggest improvement and enough restraint in his movements to suggest he had no business being in the saddle.

Good.

Elara did not go over.

That was important too.

She had already said what needed saying in the hallway. Coffee. How are you feeling? Schedule changed. No riding. Anything beyond that risked turning into a conversation neither of them had the time, sleep, or emotional stability for. So she stayed on her side of the aisle, looked down at her tablet, and let the morning continue.

Still, when she passed the notice board again a little later, she paused long enough to straighten the corner of the schedule where the paper had begun to curl.

Sawyer Tenneck — yard support / show prep / groundwork assistance. No ridden blocks.

It looked so clean there. So ordinary. No hint of the badly slept night behind it, no trace of two coffees in the hallway, no indication that Elara had stood in her tiny kitchen at dawn and lied to herself about why she was making the second cup. Just a line on a schedule, practical and precise.

That was all it needed to be.

For now.

Elara | Showgrounds | Sawyer, Felix

Elara had decided, somewhere between the freezing rain starting and Markus nearly sending a frightened grey horse through the back rail of an oxer, that small shows were a scam.

Not because they were small, necessarily. Small could be charming. Small could be useful. Small could mean fewer spectators, less pressure, cheaper food, and a slightly lower chance of running into someone who wanted to discuss her father’s breeding program while she was holding three folders and trying to stop a schedule from dissolving in the rain. But this particular show had all the misery of a large competition with none of the glamour. The weather was foul, the footing was deteriorating by the hour, the temporary office smelled of damp paper and instant coffee, and the tannoy system kept crackling with such violence that every announcement sounded like it had been dragged out of a dying radio. The whole place had become a blur of wet jackets, steaming horses, muddy boots, and people pretending they were not cold because horse people seemed to consider discomfort a competitive virtue.

Elara was cold.

She was also tired, though that was less convenient to admit.

At first, it had been easy to blame the feeling on the morning. The entry mistake with Princeton had left her running on the tight, unpleasant energy of someone who had been publicly saved from disaster by the very thing she had mishandled. Sawyer had won, which meant no one outside Falkenried understood what had actually happened. To them, the morning was a story already polishing itself into something impressive: the American rider, the grey gelding, the freezing rain, the unexpected 1.40 win. People were still approaching Felix about it. Buyers, breeders, one sponsor whose cologne seemed determined to survive the weather through sheer aggression. Everyone wanted to talk about Princeton. Everyone wanted to know whether Sawyer was staying in Germany. Everyone wanted to turn a mistake into opportunity before the rosette had even dried.

Elara had helped, because that was what there was to do. She smiled when she needed to, translated when Felix’s patience ran too thin for softness, wrote down names, numbers, and follow-up notes, and kept the whole thing moving with a calm she did not entirely feel. It was useful work. Familiar work. The kind of work she had been doing beside her father since she was old enough to understand that charm, used properly, could open doors no amount of blunt competence could. Only now, standing on wet gravel with a show folder under one arm, it did not feel decorative. It felt necessary.

That helped.

For a while.

Then her head began to ache.

At first, she ignored it. Headaches were not exactly remarkable in freezing rain, especially after too little sleep, too much coffee, and the dull humiliation of having Felix say this is why details matter in a tone that would probably haunt her until death. She tightened her scarf, drank half a bottle of water she found in the support car, and continued updating Ruby’s timings. Her class had been shifted twice, then nearly cancelled, then reinstated because only a couple of riders remained and apparently everyone involved had decided misery counted as sufficient reason to continue. Ruby, at least, was unlikely to care about prestige. Ruby cared about comfort, personal space, and whether other horses dared exist too close to her.

A sensible mare, really.

Elara stood in the covered viewing area beside Felix while Markus rode, trying very hard not to visibly react to the round unfolding below them. It was not her place. That was what she told herself. Markus was not her rider to manage, and the grey horse beneath him was not her horse to protect. Still, watching the animal grow more frantic with every stride made her jaw tighten. The horse did not look disobedient. He looked overwhelmed. There was a difference, and it was one people often missed when they were too busy trying to win an argument with an animal that had already started shouting.

When the back rail of the oxer came down, Elara looked away a second too late.

Her stomach turned.

Not dramatically. Just enough that she had to swallow once and shift her weight against the railing.

The headache sharpened behind her eyes.

She told herself it was the weather.

Sawyer had been sitting nearby for part of it, damp-haired under his hood, flushed from cold or illness or both, wrapped around a hot drink and something from the food stand. He had seemed quiet, though quiet was hardly unusual for him, and Elara had not trusted herself to look too closely after the morning. The last time she had looked too long, his attention had found hers across the crowd after Princeton’s clear round, and whatever had passed between them had felt too complicated for a wet showground and a folder full of mistakes.

So she focused on the schedule.

Ruby’s .70 class. Then possibly the .85, though the weather was making that increasingly unlikely. Tack check. Warm-up. Ring time. Prize if she placed. Load horses. Leave before the roads became worse.

Simple.

The word almost made her laugh.

By the time the announcements started coming through about cancellations, Elara’s head felt too heavy for her neck. The freezing rain had turned into a wet, miserable snow that melted against coats at first, then began to stick in thin white lines along the fencing and the tops of parked trailers. Her fingers felt clumsy even inside her gloves, and the words on the schedule blurred once before she blinked hard enough to correct them.

She had no time for this.

That was the first thought, clear and irritated.

She had made one serious mistake already today. She was not going to become another inconvenience on top of it. Ruby’s round still needed tracking, Felix needed the updated order, the transport plan had changed again because the roads were worsening, and half the remaining staff seemed to have vanished toward the barns to pack with varying levels of urgency. Elara had a job. Several, actually. And she was perfectly capable of doing them.

She stepped away from the viewing area under the very reasonable pretense of checking the class board.

No one stopped her.

Good.

The class board was fixed to the side of the temporary office, half-sheltered by a pathetic overhang that did very little against the weather. Elara checked Ruby’s number, then checked the official sheet beside it, because apparently she would now be checking official sheets until the day she died. Class correct. Rider correct. Horse correct. Two riders left in the class. No .85. Weekend likely cancelled after that. She photographed the board, sent the update to Felix, then stood there for a moment with her phone in her hand and the snow catching in her hair.

Her screen looked too bright.

Her stomach dipped.

For one horrible second, the ground seemed to tilt beneath her boots.

Elara caught the edge of the notice board with one hand.

No.

Absolutely not.

She closed her eyes briefly, breathing through her nose in a slow, measured way that felt far more dramatic than she was willing to tolerate. Faintness was humiliating. Faintness was for overheated ballrooms and women in bad historical novels, not for muddy showgrounds where she had schedules to fix and horses to load. She was probably just hungry. Or cold. Or dehydrated. Or all three, which was still not a crisis and certainly not something anyone else needed to know.

When she opened her eyes again, the board had steadied.

Mostly.

Her phone buzzed once with a message from Felix confirming Ruby’s updated class time, and Elara typed back a quick acknowledgement despite the fact that her fingers briefly forgot how to arrange themselves.

On it.

A lie, but a productive one.

She did not go back to the arena immediately.

Instead, she ducked into the temporary office area, which was less an office and more a collection of plastic tables, extension cords, damp paperwork, and two space heaters losing a battle against the elements. It was crowded enough near the secretary’s desk that no one paid much attention to her when she slipped toward the far side, where an unused table sat beneath a noticeboard covered in old class lists. There, she set down her folder, pulled out the schedule, and pretended with great determination that she had come there to work.

Technically, she was working.

She updated Ruby’s timing. Crossed out the .85. Marked weekend classes cancelled pending formal confirmation. Wrote check roads before departure in capital letters. Added load Princeton and Ruby first, because the quicker the competition horses were secure, the quicker the rest of the chaos could be managed. Then she rewrote the hotel arrangements in the margin, though that was less urgent now, given the likelihood that no one should be driving through the mountains if the weather worsened. She made a separate note to confirm whether rooms could be held an extra night if needed.

Practical things.

Useful things.

Things that did not require standing in the snow while the edges of her vision threatened to sparkle like some deeply unserious warning sign.

She leaned one hand on the table and stared down at the paper.

The words moved.

Not much. Just a faint swim of black ink against white, enough to make her press her lips together and look away toward the far wall. Her cheeks felt hot now, which was absurd because the room was cold and damp and the only heater nearby was pointed at someone else’s legs. The headache pulsed again behind her eyes, and when she swallowed, her throat felt tighter than it had an hour ago.

Oh.

No.

Her irritation sharpened into something almost offended.

She was not getting sick. That was ridiculous. Sawyer had been the sick one. She had been the responsible observer, the one bringing coffee and altering schedules and making pointed comments about moral crises. There was a structure to these things. He did not get to hand illness off to her like another emotionally avoidant object and leave her to deal with it at a showground.

Her mouth twitched faintly despite herself.

Then another wave of dizziness moved through her, and the humor vanished.

Elara lowered herself into the nearest chair before her body made the decision less gracefully. The plastic seat was cold beneath her, and she sat very still, one hand flat over the schedule, the other curled around her phone. From outside, the tannoy crackled again, muffled by the walls and weather. She heard Ruby’s class number. Heard the faint blur of a name that might have been Sawyer’s. It made her sit up slightly, too fast.

The room tilted.

She closed her eyes.

“Idiot,” she whispered to herself in German.

She should go back out. Ruby’s round needed watching. Felix would expect her near the ring. Sawyer would not need her there, obviously, but the schedule did. The work did. She had already disappeared for too long, and disappearing was worse than looking pale. Disappearing made people ask questions. But when she opened her eyes and tried to stand, her knees felt unpleasantly loose beneath her, and the sharp, swimming light at the edges of her vision returned quickly enough that she sat back down before anyone could notice.

Fine.

A minute, then.

One minute of sitting.

She could justify one minute.

Elara pulled the folder closer, angled herself so that from the doorway she might look merely busy, and began rewriting the transport checklist in neater handwriting. That was believable. That was exactly the sort of thing she might do if she wanted to avoid the weather and still look useful. She underlined road conditions twice. Circled hotel contingency. Added confirm keys with Felix, then scratched it out because Felix always had keys, documents, and deeply inconvenient opinions exactly when needed.

The pen slipped slightly in her fingers.

She set it down.

Outside, applause rose faintly through the walls.

Ruby?

Elara’s chest tightened, though she could not tell whether from guilt, fever, or the unnerving sense of having missed something she was supposed to witness. She reached for her phone to check for a message, but the screen lit up too bright again, and she squinted at it without fully reading the notifications.

No. Not yet.

Just one more minute.

She folded her arms loosely on the edge of the table and lowered her head onto them, not sleeping, obviously. Absolutely not sleeping. Resting her eyes for the length of a breath. Maybe two. The paper smelled faintly of rain and printer ink beneath her cheek, and the noise of the show softened around her until the tannoy and voices and weather all blurred into one dull, distant sound.

She would get up before anyone noticed.

She would.

Just as soon as the floor stopped feeling like it was moving.

→ Horse Eden is a fun game! Sign Up Now! ←